Arthur Rimbaud - Another Troubled Poet
There were other poets who led troubled lives.
Arthur Rimbaud was another poet writing prodigy. "Oh come let us seek absinthe's green coloured halls," wrote the young Rimbaud. Absinthe was a green coloured alcoholic drink that was dangerous to the drinker's health. It was later banned by the French government.
Rimbaud was French and was born in France in 1854. Before the age of 21 he wrote great poetry in his books called 'Illuminations' and 'The Drunken Boat'. Yet Rimbaud who was one of the founders of modern poetry, never wrote another line of poetry after the age of 20.
He fled Europe and ended up in Abyssinia or present day Ethiopia. Here he became a businessman, Then he went back to his mother's house in France and died there in 1891. He never made it to the age of 40.
His short life was full of wanderings and some suffering. Poetry certainly didn't save him from a short and troubled existence.
Thursday 31 December 2015
Monday 28 December 2015
'Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health' by Dave Jaffe
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part One
"Poetry makes nothing happen," wrote the British poet Wystan Hugh Auden. Auden was one of Britain's great 20th century poets. At one time he was a Marxist and later re-wrote parts of his poetry so as to cut out its political messages.
Still, W.H. Auden lived into his sixties and writing poetry didn't hurt him.It made him famous and allowed him to write some beautiful verse.
Others weren't so lucky. Here I'm basically continuing to write about artists, in this case poets, who lived through some tough times. I've done this elsewhere on my blog.
Emily Nelligan was born in Quebec in 1879. He started to write poetry in French when he was in his teens.But in 1899 he was supposedly hit by a nervous breakdown. he spent the rest of his life in a mental asylum.
Recent biographers claim that Nelligan's mother put him an asylum because he was gay.Yet whether this was true or not, writing poetry didn't make Nelligan's life a happy one.
.
"Poetry makes nothing happen," wrote the British poet Wystan Hugh Auden. Auden was one of Britain's great 20th century poets. At one time he was a Marxist and later re-wrote parts of his poetry so as to cut out its political messages.
Still, W.H. Auden lived into his sixties and writing poetry didn't hurt him.It made him famous and allowed him to write some beautiful verse.
Others weren't so lucky. Here I'm basically continuing to write about artists, in this case poets, who lived through some tough times. I've done this elsewhere on my blog.
Emily Nelligan was born in Quebec in 1879. He started to write poetry in French when he was in his teens.But in 1899 he was supposedly hit by a nervous breakdown. he spent the rest of his life in a mental asylum.
Recent biographers claim that Nelligan's mother put him an asylum because he was gay.Yet whether this was true or not, writing poetry didn't make Nelligan's life a happy one.
.
Monday 21 December 2015
A.M. Klein Was Quite A Guy - A Poem by Dave Jaffe
A.M. Klein Was Quite A Guy.
A.M. Klein .
Alas, he was no friend of mine.
His high school was Baron Byng.
Soon he learned to sing,
'The Internationale'
And 'The Maple Leaf Forever'.
Before he turned old
He took Bronfman gold.
Yet he wrote as his life unscrolled
For the first time
Many fine poems.
In Montreal he practiced law.
And then he heard or saw
Six million Jews
Who died with their shoes
Sometimes put in neat deadly piles,
By S.S. guards who sometimes smiled,
And then gassed all the Jews
In Hitler's death camps.
Klein wrote a book on Hitler.
He compared mythologies with Leonard Cohen
Jew to Jew.
And he knew Irving Layton,
And maybe Irving's daughter.
He gave no apprenticeship to Mordecai Richler
Who put him in a novel,
That made him no model
For any young artist.
He was another cursed poet.
"Un maudit poet," as the French say.
He descended into madness
Starting in 1952 or maybe 56.
In any case there was no fix
Coming from doctors for him.
He emerged from a Jewish womb
And was buried in the tomb
Of poetry anthologies.
So many English language poets
Who were born or lived
In Montreal
Are forgotten there.
Alongside many others who weren't.
Now they all may be forgotten
As an avalanche of French language laws
Could sweep them away once more
Into fading memory.
Yet even now
I say with a sigh
"A.M. Klein, Abraham Moses Klein,
Was quite a guy."
A.M. Klein .
Alas, he was no friend of mine.
His high school was Baron Byng.
Soon he learned to sing,
'The Internationale'
And 'The Maple Leaf Forever'.
Before he turned old
He took Bronfman gold.
Yet he wrote as his life unscrolled
For the first time
Many fine poems.
In Montreal he practiced law.
And then he heard or saw
Six million Jews
Who died with their shoes
Sometimes put in neat deadly piles,
By S.S. guards who sometimes smiled,
And then gassed all the Jews
In Hitler's death camps.
Klein wrote a book on Hitler.
He compared mythologies with Leonard Cohen
Jew to Jew.
And he knew Irving Layton,
And maybe Irving's daughter.
He gave no apprenticeship to Mordecai Richler
Who put him in a novel,
That made him no model
For any young artist.
He was another cursed poet.
"Un maudit poet," as the French say.
He descended into madness
Starting in 1952 or maybe 56.
In any case there was no fix
Coming from doctors for him.
He emerged from a Jewish womb
And was buried in the tomb
Of poetry anthologies.
So many English language poets
Who were born or lived
In Montreal
Are forgotten there.
Alongside many others who weren't.
Now they all may be forgotten
As an avalanche of French language laws
Could sweep them away once more
Into fading memory.
Yet even now
I say with a sigh
"A.M. Klein, Abraham Moses Klein,
Was quite a guy."
Tuesday 15 December 2015
Poetry by Dave Jaffe. Poem called "Take A Pill and Head South'.
Take A Pill And Head South
Come.
Let's sneak away to the sunny south
Far away from the grey skies.
You won't have to sit
In squashed airline seats.
Or wait for hours
In long impatient lines
Of passengers.
It's really simple.
At three in the morning
Swallow half a tylenol and codeine pill.
Close your eyes
And you're off.
Away from winter grey
That swirls outside
And inside your head.
Go away from the rains
That drip endlessly in your mind.
Then suddenly
You're floating
In tropical skies
That move past you in homage to your arrival.
Now you watch
Afro-Cubans dance
Churning the air with their energy.
They dance
In faded dance halls
Rimmed with dust
Or cash filled casino floors in Havana.
You see
Parakeets in red and yellow
Plunge into cobalt blue waters.
Or they let their feathered wings
Gently brush the cannabis-dazed beards
Of grounded Jamaican rastas.
Palm trees sprout on the borders of beaches.
Or they bow to you in the wind
As you walk past them.
Hotel windows open or move in random creakiness
Blown back and forth by the blue air.
Sometimes
Clouds scurry across the warm sky.
Or a three course meal
Churns your stomach.
But mostly
You lie on a gentle beach
And live in warmth and love.
Your spirits soar
Like a faraway parrot
That climbs in its blazing colours
Into the blue dish of the sky.
Far far away from pain
And rain
And rain.
Come.
Let's sneak away to the sunny south
Far away from the grey skies.
You won't have to sit
In squashed airline seats.
Or wait for hours
In long impatient lines
Of passengers.
It's really simple.
At three in the morning
Swallow half a tylenol and codeine pill.
Close your eyes
And you're off.
Away from winter grey
That swirls outside
And inside your head.
Go away from the rains
That drip endlessly in your mind.
Then suddenly
You're floating
In tropical skies
That move past you in homage to your arrival.
Now you watch
Afro-Cubans dance
Churning the air with their energy.
They dance
In faded dance halls
Rimmed with dust
Or cash filled casino floors in Havana.
You see
Parakeets in red and yellow
Plunge into cobalt blue waters.
Or they let their feathered wings
Gently brush the cannabis-dazed beards
Of grounded Jamaican rastas.
Palm trees sprout on the borders of beaches.
Or they bow to you in the wind
As you walk past them.
Hotel windows open or move in random creakiness
Blown back and forth by the blue air.
Sometimes
Clouds scurry across the warm sky.
Or a three course meal
Churns your stomach.
But mostly
You lie on a gentle beach
And live in warmth and love.
Your spirits soar
Like a faraway parrot
That climbs in its blazing colours
Into the blue dish of the sky.
Far far away from pain
And rain
And rain.
Monday 7 December 2015
Poem by Dave Jaffe 'An Old Man Looks At Love'
An Old Man Looks At Love
It cannot be
That one and one makes three,
That two and two don't make four.
Or add up to something more.
Numbers are mysteries to me,
Like your brown eyes.
Your eyes meet mine
And like moons they shine.
I look away burned by love.
But can't give it an endless shove
Into a future
I won't control or be in.
In this food court mall
I fear moving or a fall.
Here where I've broken an arm before,
Crashing on a well tiled floor.
Now I'm an old man,
One of many torn
Then stuck in static memories
Of pain, of loss and
Of love.
It cannot be
That one and one makes three,
That two and two don't make four.
Or add up to something more.
Numbers are mysteries to me,
Like your brown eyes.
Your eyes meet mine
And like moons they shine.
I look away burned by love.
But can't give it an endless shove
Into a future
I won't control or be in.
In this food court mall
I fear moving or a fall.
Here where I've broken an arm before,
Crashing on a well tiled floor.
Now I'm an old man,
One of many torn
Then stuck in static memories
Of pain, of loss and
Of love.
Wednesday 25 November 2015
Dear Justin - A Poem by Dave Jaffe
Dear Justin
Dear Mr. Prime Minister
Be Justin the Just
Not Justin the Arrogant.
Remember
That Quebec is not the only province in Canada
And that other provinces sometimes get angy too.
(But they don't threaten to secede).
Don't forget
The 325 promises you made
During tense election days.
Don't break most of them
At once or immediately.
Listen to the old wise men of the Liberal Party.
Whose heads are wreathed
With cynicism arrogance and power.
But remember
The young people who voted for you
Their hands full of hope
As they cast their ballots.
Think of the homeless and the poorest
Laying their creased faces down on sidewalks
Or in crowded shelters
Day after day
Night after night.
And don't forget
The 149 Indian reserves
That have to boil their water.
Didn't your mother
Once campaign
For clean water around the world?
Shouldn't you do the same for our First Nations?
And don't end your time at 24 Sussex Drive
In an orgy of patronage
As your father did.
Be wise, be compassionate.
be Justin the Just.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister
Be Justin the Just
Not Justin the Arrogant.
Remember
That Quebec is not the only province in Canada
And that other provinces sometimes get angy too.
(But they don't threaten to secede).
Don't forget
The 325 promises you made
During tense election days.
Don't break most of them
At once or immediately.
Listen to the old wise men of the Liberal Party.
Whose heads are wreathed
With cynicism arrogance and power.
But remember
The young people who voted for you
Their hands full of hope
As they cast their ballots.
Think of the homeless and the poorest
Laying their creased faces down on sidewalks
Or in crowded shelters
Day after day
Night after night.
And don't forget
The 149 Indian reserves
That have to boil their water.
Didn't your mother
Once campaign
For clean water around the world?
Shouldn't you do the same for our First Nations?
And don't end your time at 24 Sussex Drive
In an orgy of patronage
As your father did.
Be wise, be compassionate.
be Justin the Just.
My Knees A Poem by Dave Jaffe
My Knees
My knees
Are battered broken
And wrenched all out of shape.
My knees
are ugly twisted and
misshapen.
My knees
Are painful hurting bruised and
Filled with pain
Especially when it rains.
Yet my knees
Keep me moving
Push me out of doors
Into mornings of welcoming sun rays and blue skies.
They glide through
The water when I swim
They sit me down in restaurants
Raise me up from drowsy armchairs
Walk me through
Upscale malls and scrappy ones too.
They bend me down to sleep.
It's amazing
That my knees still work
Sometimes.
My knees
Are battered broken
And wrenched all out of shape.
My knees
are ugly twisted and
misshapen.
My knees
Are painful hurting bruised and
Filled with pain
Especially when it rains.
Yet my knees
Keep me moving
Push me out of doors
Into mornings of welcoming sun rays and blue skies.
They glide through
The water when I swim
They sit me down in restaurants
Raise me up from drowsy armchairs
Walk me through
Upscale malls and scrappy ones too.
They bend me down to sleep.
It's amazing
That my knees still work
Sometimes.
Tuesday 17 November 2015
Montreal Spring Days by Dave Jaffe
Montreal Spring Days
I loved those days.
The snow the snow
Piled up by months of winter
Was melting under the mild yellow sun.
At night time I slip but don't fall
On the freezing sidewalk
As water hardened into ice.
Today I would shrink from the night's dangers.
But back then
Young and frisky
I crunched the ice with my supple feet.
Soon, too soon
Summer's heat would descend on the city
And crush me in its humid grasp.
Yet now it was spring in Montreal
And the clear night sky
Curved like a dark joyful bowl above me,
While ice froze below.
I loved those days and nights
They were lovely
In the spring time of my life.
I loved those days.
The snow the snow
Piled up by months of winter
Was melting under the mild yellow sun.
At night time I slip but don't fall
On the freezing sidewalk
As water hardened into ice.
Today I would shrink from the night's dangers.
But back then
Young and frisky
I crunched the ice with my supple feet.
Soon, too soon
Summer's heat would descend on the city
And crush me in its humid grasp.
Yet now it was spring in Montreal
And the clear night sky
Curved like a dark joyful bowl above me,
While ice froze below.
I loved those days and nights
They were lovely
In the spring time of my life.
Monday 9 November 2015
Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe
Beyond The Present by Dave Jaffe
Time can't be gathered in your hands
It moves like the crow's flight
A falling black shriek
In a grey autumn sky
Or it floats in a calm blue sea
Of waving memories.
In city streets
Giant bulldozers noisily
Crush memories into dust.
While giant blue grey condos
Slowly rise from the underground
And throw shadows
On the human dots below.
Old people like me
Are wafted into the past by poetry or music
Or look at old landscapes.
There I dwell in lands
Empty of backfiring cars
The electric whine of the carpenter's saw
And the brute noise of the jackhammer.
My world is
Small and beautiful,
Like the aspens standing in white quiet coloumns,
In a photo I took long ago
Outside of a town whose name I have forgotten.
Time can't be gathered in your hands
It moves like the crow's flight
A falling black shriek
In a grey autumn sky
Or it floats in a calm blue sea
Of waving memories.
In city streets
Giant bulldozers noisily
Crush memories into dust.
While giant blue grey condos
Slowly rise from the underground
And throw shadows
On the human dots below.
Old people like me
Are wafted into the past by poetry or music
Or look at old landscapes.
There I dwell in lands
Empty of backfiring cars
The electric whine of the carpenter's saw
And the brute noise of the jackhammer.
My world is
Small and beautiful,
Like the aspens standing in white quiet coloumns,
In a photo I took long ago
Outside of a town whose name I have forgotten.
Saturday 24 October 2015
Poem called 'Lament For A Lady'
Despite my belief that most people don't make too much money writing poetry, I've started writing poems now. I realize that in poems you can say and feel things that you can't do - or I can't do- painting pictures. So here's my first poem in a long time called 'Lament For A Lady'.
Men didn't invent love or lust
it was there
before two legged beasts stretched themselves upright
long ago
and walked slowly onwards
in the African dust.
god didn't invent you
you were born
months after your father
and mother held each other
embraced each other
and made love together
forever in my mind
i didn't search for you
you came singing unannounced
long ago
a part of a choir
chanting hymns in the choir's second row
in a church
i no longer go to.
i no longer seek you
in eager scurrying crowds
downtown or uptown or in the burbs
but i dream of you
not at night time but in the day's first stirrings
when the sun's white rays peep above the green horizon
and then
i miss you
and will miss you
probably forever
Men didn't invent love or lust
it was there
before two legged beasts stretched themselves upright
long ago
and walked slowly onwards
in the African dust.
god didn't invent you
you were born
months after your father
and mother held each other
embraced each other
and made love together
forever in my mind
i didn't search for you
you came singing unannounced
long ago
a part of a choir
chanting hymns in the choir's second row
in a church
i no longer go to.
i no longer seek you
in eager scurrying crowds
downtown or uptown or in the burbs
but i dream of you
not at night time but in the day's first stirrings
when the sun's white rays peep above the green horizon
and then
i miss you
and will miss you
probably forever
Wednesday 21 October 2015
My Life In Two or Three Short Chapters - Chapter Three
Deliverance Two - How My Life Finally Improved
When I was 32 another tragedy hit me. I became handicapped. My knees swelled from chondromalacia or patella femoral syndrome. I now needed crutches to walk and whenever I walked my knees ached.
I was by now a fully grown man, and a short, stocky, bad person.
I abused men and especially women. I couldn't control the anger that coursed through me and I was overwhelmed by grief and sadness. People saw me as a person to stay away from. "Oh help me, here comes Dave Jaffe!" one man exclaimed when he met me in someone's back yard. Another man who worked with me as I drifted from one job to another, told me years later," When I worked with you I thought you were crazy and completely paranoid."
Yet then there came a saviour, right when my life had fallen to its lowest level. Edward, as I'll call this man, was a tall nerdy individual who did three things for me. First off, he introduced me to primal therapy. Then he taught me how to write news stories and longer feature stories. He was teaching me the outlines of journalism. Last he showed me how to access welfare for my savings were quickly sinking to zero.
Bingo. Ten years after my father found a new life as a salesman, I found a way to survive. My problems were solved. Now in 1976, the second half of my life began. I lived on welfare - at least for a while. I wrote news stories for small papers - sometimes under other names. In many of these stories I attacked the power holders of B.C. and Canada. "That man's still fighting with his father," one woman I knew said of me. "Only this time he's doing it in print." She was right.
I continued doing primal therapy and then rational emotive therapy. My anger subsided some and my sadness started to fade. Finally I was grieving the hurts and pains in my life. And for the most part I stopped abusing people, especially women. After learning to write news stories, I took up drawing and then painting. At last I was learning some skills.
I should point out that I'm also a fetishist who gets turned on by certain parts of women's clothing. I ended up going to prostitutes to relieve my tensions. These visits cost me a lot of money but I had to make them. In my 60's I stopped visiting these women.
I had a political side too. But in my mid-50's I left political parties and the anti-poverty movements I'd been part of.
A woman I knew loathed Edward who at one time had helped me so much. "He stole thousands of dollars from me. That man is a fraud." she said. "Fair enough," I replied ."But this man saved my life. If he hadn't come along when he did, I'd be dead by now."
I am grateful to my friends who put up with me and my tantrums and far out interests. I am also eternally grateful to Canadian taxpayers whose taxes fund social programs that I have lived off. For these programs have kept me alive. Without them too, I'd be long dead.
This is my life in short and simple words.
When I was 32 another tragedy hit me. I became handicapped. My knees swelled from chondromalacia or patella femoral syndrome. I now needed crutches to walk and whenever I walked my knees ached.
I was by now a fully grown man, and a short, stocky, bad person.
I abused men and especially women. I couldn't control the anger that coursed through me and I was overwhelmed by grief and sadness. People saw me as a person to stay away from. "Oh help me, here comes Dave Jaffe!" one man exclaimed when he met me in someone's back yard. Another man who worked with me as I drifted from one job to another, told me years later," When I worked with you I thought you were crazy and completely paranoid."
Yet then there came a saviour, right when my life had fallen to its lowest level. Edward, as I'll call this man, was a tall nerdy individual who did three things for me. First off, he introduced me to primal therapy. Then he taught me how to write news stories and longer feature stories. He was teaching me the outlines of journalism. Last he showed me how to access welfare for my savings were quickly sinking to zero.
Bingo. Ten years after my father found a new life as a salesman, I found a way to survive. My problems were solved. Now in 1976, the second half of my life began. I lived on welfare - at least for a while. I wrote news stories for small papers - sometimes under other names. In many of these stories I attacked the power holders of B.C. and Canada. "That man's still fighting with his father," one woman I knew said of me. "Only this time he's doing it in print." She was right.
I continued doing primal therapy and then rational emotive therapy. My anger subsided some and my sadness started to fade. Finally I was grieving the hurts and pains in my life. And for the most part I stopped abusing people, especially women. After learning to write news stories, I took up drawing and then painting. At last I was learning some skills.
I should point out that I'm also a fetishist who gets turned on by certain parts of women's clothing. I ended up going to prostitutes to relieve my tensions. These visits cost me a lot of money but I had to make them. In my 60's I stopped visiting these women.
I had a political side too. But in my mid-50's I left political parties and the anti-poverty movements I'd been part of.
A woman I knew loathed Edward who at one time had helped me so much. "He stole thousands of dollars from me. That man is a fraud." she said. "Fair enough," I replied ."But this man saved my life. If he hadn't come along when he did, I'd be dead by now."
I am grateful to my friends who put up with me and my tantrums and far out interests. I am also eternally grateful to Canadian taxpayers whose taxes fund social programs that I have lived off. For these programs have kept me alive. Without them too, I'd be long dead.
This is my life in short and simple words.
Tuesday 20 October 2015
My Life In Two Or Three Parts- PartThree
Deliverance
It must have been March 1965.
I had graduated from McGill University the year before with a useless degree in English Literature. My parents were shoehorned into a tiny apartment in Montreal's north end. I was jobless, and hopping from one friend's place to another, a man on the move just following in my parent's foot steps and mimicking their endless moving.
As the snow melted in the streets of Montreal, my father ran into a man he knew.. "Monty," he said," you can get a job selling cablevision to homeowners and apartment dwellers." My father went around to the address he was given and was instantly hired.
Then he went out and started selling cablevision.. In the first week he made more than he'd made in the previous six months.
Bingo he was no longer poor.
We moved again downtown into a small apartment and I tagged along with my parents. In the next year I dropped out of teacher's college for a second time and then hitchhiked and bused out to Vancouver. I loved this city on the Georgia Straight with its neasrby mountains and mild weather.
As soon as I came back I told my dad, "we should all move out west to the Pacific. It's great out there." My dad told me that he'd already told his company that he wanted to move to Vancouver and that's where and my mother were planning to go to. In late 1966 my family pulled up roots again and took another journey. I followed my parents out west and left Montreal with my sister Valerie in the middle of a December snow storm.
When we arrived in Vancouver in the middle of night it was raining. "This is the fortieth day in a row that it's raining out here," the cab driver who picked us up told me. "God bless the rain," I used to say years later.It sure beats the snow." But I didn't say something like that in the first years that I lived in Vancouver.
A few months later in the spring of 1967 I was feeling good. I was preparing to try for the thired time to be a teacher. Yet then tragedy struck
In late April Valerie the sister I was closest to, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. In September my mother Lillian Jaffe passed away from cancer. In December one of my cousins died in a hospital in London England. I was devastated.
In the history books, the summer of 1967 is called 'The Summer of Love'. That year as U.S. armed forces fought killed and died in Vietnam, the Beatles's 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' played in millions of North American homes. Thousands of young people left their parents's place for a while to live in places like Kitsilano in Vancouver, Toronto's Yorkville and above all The Haight Ashberry district in San Francisco.
The young people called themselve'hippies'. They grew their hair long, dressed in casual clothing, smoked marijuana and made love sometimes in old houses. "I'm for love and peace," they said. I could not join this great outpouring of energy. In my history book the summer of 1967 I called "the Summer of death'.
It must have been March 1965.
I had graduated from McGill University the year before with a useless degree in English Literature. My parents were shoehorned into a tiny apartment in Montreal's north end. I was jobless, and hopping from one friend's place to another, a man on the move just following in my parent's foot steps and mimicking their endless moving.
As the snow melted in the streets of Montreal, my father ran into a man he knew.. "Monty," he said," you can get a job selling cablevision to homeowners and apartment dwellers." My father went around to the address he was given and was instantly hired.
Then he went out and started selling cablevision.. In the first week he made more than he'd made in the previous six months.
Bingo he was no longer poor.
We moved again downtown into a small apartment and I tagged along with my parents. In the next year I dropped out of teacher's college for a second time and then hitchhiked and bused out to Vancouver. I loved this city on the Georgia Straight with its neasrby mountains and mild weather.
As soon as I came back I told my dad, "we should all move out west to the Pacific. It's great out there." My dad told me that he'd already told his company that he wanted to move to Vancouver and that's where and my mother were planning to go to. In late 1966 my family pulled up roots again and took another journey. I followed my parents out west and left Montreal with my sister Valerie in the middle of a December snow storm.
When we arrived in Vancouver in the middle of night it was raining. "This is the fortieth day in a row that it's raining out here," the cab driver who picked us up told me. "God bless the rain," I used to say years later.It sure beats the snow." But I didn't say something like that in the first years that I lived in Vancouver.
A few months later in the spring of 1967 I was feeling good. I was preparing to try for the thired time to be a teacher. Yet then tragedy struck
In late April Valerie the sister I was closest to, died of a cerebral hemorrhage. In September my mother Lillian Jaffe passed away from cancer. In December one of my cousins died in a hospital in London England. I was devastated.
In the history books, the summer of 1967 is called 'The Summer of Love'. That year as U.S. armed forces fought killed and died in Vietnam, the Beatles's 'Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band' played in millions of North American homes. Thousands of young people left their parents's place for a while to live in places like Kitsilano in Vancouver, Toronto's Yorkville and above all The Haight Ashberry district in San Francisco.
The young people called themselve'hippies'. They grew their hair long, dressed in casual clothing, smoked marijuana and made love sometimes in old houses. "I'm for love and peace," they said. I could not join this great outpouring of energy. In my history book the summer of 1967 I called "the Summer of death'.
Sunday 18 October 2015
My Life In Two or Three Short Chapters. Part Two
Part One of My Life.
In a few years I'll be gone. Dead. Kaput. Finito. My body will be cremated and my ashes - I hope- will be scattered along the shores of Spanish Banks.
Of course, I won't be here to see this. Every year 50 million people die and so for once I'll be part of the vast majority, the 27 billion people who once lived but 20 billion of whom are now gone.
"Are you married?" people often ask me, a 73 year-old bald old man. "Do you have any children?'.
I reply in the negative to both questions. Then I'm often asked what did I do in my life. "I'm an ageing impoverished artist," I reply. I painted pictures I say that only half a dozen people ever saw and before wrote news stories that only a few hundred people ever read.
My life splits into three or four distinct parts. The first part begins when I first came into this world in May, 1942. I was born in England as German bombers scoured large parts of Britain bombing and killing. At first I was lucky. My family wasn't poor and my father owned two businesses.
Yet then disaster struck. When I was eight or so, my father lost both businesses, and spent money he didn't have. Plunged into disgrace, me, my two sisters and my mum and dad left for Canada to seek a better world.
At first it was not to be. From about 1953 or 1954 my family fell into poverty. My father an intense working class Londoner, Montague or Monty Jaffe, was a fanatical Orthodox Jew though he never wore the long sideburns or black suits of the really devout Jews. My mother, Lillian Bolloten Jaffe was a declassed formerly upper middle class woman who ended up working in poorly paid claerical jobs in Montreal offices.
My father started endless businesses in Montreal that just like the ones he'd founded in Britain, all went bankrupt. "Your father wasn't a business man," a man who knew my father well said. "He just didn't have street smarts or know how to save money."
In Montreal my family moved from one ill-furnished apartment to another, barely ahead of yapping bailiffs and landlords. My dad ended up selling aluminum sidings to poor French Canadians. At this stage of our life say about 1960, we were losers pure and simple.
Yet slowly life improved. My elder sister Sylvia was the first to escape. She moved to California in 1960, got married, divorced and then married again. To-day she's a wealthy woman who lived in suburban Chicago and is a strong Republican.
My younger sister Valerie and I stayed behind. Along with our parents we first went nowhere, sweltering in Montreal's broiling humid summers and freezing through its endless winters. But then came deliverance.
(Continued in next part)
In a few years I'll be gone. Dead. Kaput. Finito. My body will be cremated and my ashes - I hope- will be scattered along the shores of Spanish Banks.
Of course, I won't be here to see this. Every year 50 million people die and so for once I'll be part of the vast majority, the 27 billion people who once lived but 20 billion of whom are now gone.
"Are you married?" people often ask me, a 73 year-old bald old man. "Do you have any children?'.
I reply in the negative to both questions. Then I'm often asked what did I do in my life. "I'm an ageing impoverished artist," I reply. I painted pictures I say that only half a dozen people ever saw and before wrote news stories that only a few hundred people ever read.
My life splits into three or four distinct parts. The first part begins when I first came into this world in May, 1942. I was born in England as German bombers scoured large parts of Britain bombing and killing. At first I was lucky. My family wasn't poor and my father owned two businesses.
Yet then disaster struck. When I was eight or so, my father lost both businesses, and spent money he didn't have. Plunged into disgrace, me, my two sisters and my mum and dad left for Canada to seek a better world.
At first it was not to be. From about 1953 or 1954 my family fell into poverty. My father an intense working class Londoner, Montague or Monty Jaffe, was a fanatical Orthodox Jew though he never wore the long sideburns or black suits of the really devout Jews. My mother, Lillian Bolloten Jaffe was a declassed formerly upper middle class woman who ended up working in poorly paid claerical jobs in Montreal offices.
My father started endless businesses in Montreal that just like the ones he'd founded in Britain, all went bankrupt. "Your father wasn't a business man," a man who knew my father well said. "He just didn't have street smarts or know how to save money."
In Montreal my family moved from one ill-furnished apartment to another, barely ahead of yapping bailiffs and landlords. My dad ended up selling aluminum sidings to poor French Canadians. At this stage of our life say about 1960, we were losers pure and simple.
Yet slowly life improved. My elder sister Sylvia was the first to escape. She moved to California in 1960, got married, divorced and then married again. To-day she's a wealthy woman who lived in suburban Chicago and is a strong Republican.
My younger sister Valerie and I stayed behind. Along with our parents we first went nowhere, sweltering in Montreal's broiling humid summers and freezing through its endless winters. But then came deliverance.
(Continued in next part)
Tuesday 13 October 2015
Starving Artists- Continued
The Self-Destructive Artist 200 years ago and after
The myth of the self-destructive artist and poet came out of late 18th century Britain. "Heard melodies are sweet/ But those unheard are sweeter' wrote one early Romantic poet. Yet whatever poets heard or didn't hear back then, some of them died quite young.
John Keats, a famous English poet wrote some great poems but died of tubercolosis at he age of 25. Keats was born in 1795. He didn't live to see much of the 19th century.
Lord Byron a bisexual poet from the British aristocracy did get out of England but he didn't live too long either. Byron, says of one person of him, "was one of the greatest English poets." He made love to dozens of women ansd men and was a cash addict who wasted oodles of money.
In the 1820's,George Gordon Brown went off to Greece to help the Greeks in their war of independence against their Turkish rulers. The Greeks won the war but Byron didn't live to see it. He died from a fever in Greece at the age of 36.
Then before Byron and Keats there was Thomas Chatterton the 18th century English poet. He killed himself at the age of 28 in 1770.
Yet writing poetry didn't always lead to poets killing themselves or living in poverty.
"You have lived your elaborate lie'" wrote the young Leonard Cohen. "So let us compare mythologies." Cohen like many talented poets avoided addictions, alcoholism and suicide. So did most other poets. Irving Layton who like Cohen also lived in Montreal, was a flamboyant figure who grew up really poor. Yet he ended up as a tenured professor teaching at the University of Toronto.
Nor were these two poets exceptions. In post World war Two North America, many creative writers found jobs teaching at colleges and universities. Others took up careers in other fields and still found time to write poetry, and novels, or teach in the visual arts.. So writing poetry isn't always a dangerous task. Only one thing stands out about poetry is that like many other arts it doesn't make you much money, by itself.
The myth of the self-destructive artist and poet came out of late 18th century Britain. "Heard melodies are sweet/ But those unheard are sweeter' wrote one early Romantic poet. Yet whatever poets heard or didn't hear back then, some of them died quite young.
John Keats, a famous English poet wrote some great poems but died of tubercolosis at he age of 25. Keats was born in 1795. He didn't live to see much of the 19th century.
Lord Byron a bisexual poet from the British aristocracy did get out of England but he didn't live too long either. Byron, says of one person of him, "was one of the greatest English poets." He made love to dozens of women ansd men and was a cash addict who wasted oodles of money.
In the 1820's,George Gordon Brown went off to Greece to help the Greeks in their war of independence against their Turkish rulers. The Greeks won the war but Byron didn't live to see it. He died from a fever in Greece at the age of 36.
Then before Byron and Keats there was Thomas Chatterton the 18th century English poet. He killed himself at the age of 28 in 1770.
Yet writing poetry didn't always lead to poets killing themselves or living in poverty.
"You have lived your elaborate lie'" wrote the young Leonard Cohen. "So let us compare mythologies." Cohen like many talented poets avoided addictions, alcoholism and suicide. So did most other poets. Irving Layton who like Cohen also lived in Montreal, was a flamboyant figure who grew up really poor. Yet he ended up as a tenured professor teaching at the University of Toronto.
Nor were these two poets exceptions. In post World war Two North America, many creative writers found jobs teaching at colleges and universities. Others took up careers in other fields and still found time to write poetry, and novels, or teach in the visual arts.. So writing poetry isn't always a dangerous task. Only one thing stands out about poetry is that like many other arts it doesn't make you much money, by itself.
Friday 9 October 2015
Starving Artists- Continuation of previous story on poetry. Part Nine Continued
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health and Your Life
Being a poet isn't sometimes just a road to poverty. It can also lead to an early death. Gwendolyn MacEwen grew up in Toronto. She was three years younger than Margaret Atwood. MacEwen was a good poet too. In the 1950's and 1960's she and Margaret Atwood were great friends.
Yet MacEwen's literary career just didn't take off like Atwood's. She was an alcoholic and died in 1987.
Sylvia Plath became a poster child of the doomed feminist woman poet. Plath was a Boston-born prodigy who wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Her semi-autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' came out in the early 1960's. A short time later this gifted woman killed herself in London, England.
Plath belongs to the haunted generation who came of age in the 1930's and after. One of her contemporaries, Anne Sexton was another gifted poet who committed suicide. She died in the 1970's.
Male poets of this era didn't all get off easily either. John Berryman was another great American poet. "He was one of the founders of the confessional school of poetry," said one critic about Berryman. Berryman had his problems. His demons stopped haunting him in 1974 when he killed himself.
Randall Jarrell another fine poet of mid-20th century America did himself in in 1966.
Some U.S. male poets survived but just barely. Theodore Roethke drank lots of alcohol and had bouts of mental illness.He died at the age of 55. "The greenhouse," wrote Roethke , "is my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." Maybe Roethke never found that greenhouse on this earth.
Robert Lowell trod down the same path as Roethke though he lived longer. Lowell was an upper class Boston Brahmin who had many bouts of mental illness. He spent some time in mental hospitals. He died in 1977 at the age of 70. Helen Vendler, a critic called Lowell's 1960 book 'Life Studies', "Lowell's most original book." It was acclaimed by many as a poetic masterpiece.
For some poets in 20th century North America, life was a tough road to go down. Yet this wasn't the first time that poets had faced mental and physical problems.
Being a poet isn't sometimes just a road to poverty. It can also lead to an early death. Gwendolyn MacEwen grew up in Toronto. She was three years younger than Margaret Atwood. MacEwen was a good poet too. In the 1950's and 1960's she and Margaret Atwood were great friends.
Yet MacEwen's literary career just didn't take off like Atwood's. She was an alcoholic and died in 1987.
Sylvia Plath became a poster child of the doomed feminist woman poet. Plath was a Boston-born prodigy who wrote poetry, short stories and novels. Her semi-autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' came out in the early 1960's. A short time later this gifted woman killed herself in London, England.
Plath belongs to the haunted generation who came of age in the 1930's and after. One of her contemporaries, Anne Sexton was another gifted poet who committed suicide. She died in the 1970's.
Male poets of this era didn't all get off easily either. John Berryman was another great American poet. "He was one of the founders of the confessional school of poetry," said one critic about Berryman. Berryman had his problems. His demons stopped haunting him in 1974 when he killed himself.
Randall Jarrell another fine poet of mid-20th century America did himself in in 1966.
Some U.S. male poets survived but just barely. Theodore Roethke drank lots of alcohol and had bouts of mental illness.He died at the age of 55. "The greenhouse," wrote Roethke , "is my symbol for the whole of life, a womb, a heaven-on-earth." Maybe Roethke never found that greenhouse on this earth.
Robert Lowell trod down the same path as Roethke though he lived longer. Lowell was an upper class Boston Brahmin who had many bouts of mental illness. He spent some time in mental hospitals. He died in 1977 at the age of 70. Helen Vendler, a critic called Lowell's 1960 book 'Life Studies', "Lowell's most original book." It was acclaimed by many as a poetic masterpiece.
For some poets in 20th century North America, life was a tough road to go down. Yet this wasn't the first time that poets had faced mental and physical problems.
Wednesday 7 October 2015
Starving Artists - Part Nine
Writing Poetry Doesn't Mean You Earn Much Money
They are both famous Canadians and not only famous. Until recently, they were both rich. Now only one is. Yet at one time they both wrote poetry. But they rarely write it any longer. For poets like many other creative artists don't make much money from churning out poems.
Margaret Atwood is a writer, novelist, poet and librettist and is one of Canada's most famous writers. "Margaret Atwood is an icon in Toronto," one of that city's residents says."it takes guts to criticize her back there."
Montreal-born Leonard Cohen has written songs that are played all over the world. His song 'Hallelujah' has been covered by dozens of artists. k.d. lang sang it at the opening of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Until recently, when Cohen's financial advisor was revealed as a croo, Cohen's assets supposedlytotalled in the millions of dollars. Yet even to-day Cohen's not a poor man. Now both of these artists started out writing poetry. To-day they may still write the occasional poem but they don't make their living writing poetry. Not too many poets do.
"Poetry," writes John Berger, "addresses the heart, the wound, the dead. Everything which has its being within the realm of our intersubjectivities." These are perceptive words about poetry. Still, those who write poetry have to eat and writing poetry these days just doesn't pay the bills.
Margaret Atwood started writing poetry in the late 1950's. She wrote some fine poems but this didn't bring in much cash. In 1969 she published her first popular novel called 'The Edible Woman'. She then followed it up with another novel called 'Surfacing." Atwood was now on her way to fame and fortune.
"Every book that Atwood turns out is usually a best seller," one Vancouver book store worker said back in the 1990's. If she had stuck to writing poetry, Atwood by now would have rated an honourable mention in a Canadian anthology of poetry. Yet she didn't. Fortunately for Canada she turned to writing novels She did well and so did most Canadians.
Then there was Leonard Cohen. "I'm going to be big," Cohen told his friend Ron Halas in the mid-1960's. "I'll be bigger than everybody including Bob Dylan." Cohen never achieved the kind of fame he predicted basically because his music never became very popular in the United States. Still, his song writing and performing music gave him money and fame. His poetry like 'Let Us Compare Mythologies' and his novels 'The Favourite Game' and 'Beautiful Losers' were quite good. Cohen I think was a better poet than a novelist. Still, none of his prose works brought in much money. Song writing did.
What happened to Atwood and Cohen as poets was just typical. Thomas Stearns Eliot moved around London in the 1920's and after as head of a publishing company. The St. Louis-bornT.S. Eliot just about invented modern English language poetry with his long poem 'The Waste Land'. Poetry opened the doors for Eliot to enter British society. Yet it was his job as a the head of a publishing company that paid the bills, and not his poetry.
Wallace Stevens wrote some great poetry in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. But once again poetry couldn't keep him alive. In the daytime Stevens worked as an executive in an insurance company.
They are both famous Canadians and not only famous. Until recently, they were both rich. Now only one is. Yet at one time they both wrote poetry. But they rarely write it any longer. For poets like many other creative artists don't make much money from churning out poems.
Margaret Atwood is a writer, novelist, poet and librettist and is one of Canada's most famous writers. "Margaret Atwood is an icon in Toronto," one of that city's residents says."it takes guts to criticize her back there."
Montreal-born Leonard Cohen has written songs that are played all over the world. His song 'Hallelujah' has been covered by dozens of artists. k.d. lang sang it at the opening of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Until recently, when Cohen's financial advisor was revealed as a croo, Cohen's assets supposedlytotalled in the millions of dollars. Yet even to-day Cohen's not a poor man. Now both of these artists started out writing poetry. To-day they may still write the occasional poem but they don't make their living writing poetry. Not too many poets do.
"Poetry," writes John Berger, "addresses the heart, the wound, the dead. Everything which has its being within the realm of our intersubjectivities." These are perceptive words about poetry. Still, those who write poetry have to eat and writing poetry these days just doesn't pay the bills.
Margaret Atwood started writing poetry in the late 1950's. She wrote some fine poems but this didn't bring in much cash. In 1969 she published her first popular novel called 'The Edible Woman'. She then followed it up with another novel called 'Surfacing." Atwood was now on her way to fame and fortune.
"Every book that Atwood turns out is usually a best seller," one Vancouver book store worker said back in the 1990's. If she had stuck to writing poetry, Atwood by now would have rated an honourable mention in a Canadian anthology of poetry. Yet she didn't. Fortunately for Canada she turned to writing novels She did well and so did most Canadians.
Then there was Leonard Cohen. "I'm going to be big," Cohen told his friend Ron Halas in the mid-1960's. "I'll be bigger than everybody including Bob Dylan." Cohen never achieved the kind of fame he predicted basically because his music never became very popular in the United States. Still, his song writing and performing music gave him money and fame. His poetry like 'Let Us Compare Mythologies' and his novels 'The Favourite Game' and 'Beautiful Losers' were quite good. Cohen I think was a better poet than a novelist. Still, none of his prose works brought in much money. Song writing did.
What happened to Atwood and Cohen as poets was just typical. Thomas Stearns Eliot moved around London in the 1920's and after as head of a publishing company. The St. Louis-bornT.S. Eliot just about invented modern English language poetry with his long poem 'The Waste Land'. Poetry opened the doors for Eliot to enter British society. Yet it was his job as a the head of a publishing company that paid the bills, and not his poetry.
Wallace Stevens wrote some great poetry in the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century. But once again poetry couldn't keep him alive. In the daytime Stevens worked as an executive in an insurance company.
Thursday 1 October 2015
Starving Artists - Part Eight: The Life of One Film Director.
Starving Artists - Part Eight
You often meet very interesting people at a Starbucks restaurant.
In the summer of 2015 I started to chat with Ross Munro, a 52 year-old teacher at a west side Vancouver high school. He was having his morning coffee at a Starbucks restaurant before going off to work.
Munro not only helps young people learn to cope with everyday challenges, he's also directed and scripted two feature films and two documentaries. "my first feature film cost me about $50,000 in 2000," this energetic native of Winnipeg says. "My second film will cost me about $75,000."
I saw Munro's first film called 'Brewster McGee' on my DVD machine.. It's shot in black and white and takes place in a parked car and a nearby fast food restaurant. I liked parts of it but it seemed to me to be incomplete. When I gently suggested to Munro that the film needed maybe more background or introductory material, Munro smiled.
"I could have done a lot more," he said if I'd had even more money."
In this story on underpaid if not starving artists, I've left out film directors and specifically Canadian film directors. This short piece is an attempt to fill that gap. "The film is the art " or most important art, "of the first half of the twentieth century," wrote John Berger way back in 1964. Even to-day with the rise of the Internet, a movie or at least a well-made one is still the most important work of art to-day in 2015.
Films are incredibly expensive to make and take a long time to complete. I can paint a small watercolour picture in less than three hours. my painting materials cost me less than twenty dollars. I may never sell my work but I always get a great kick from doing a watercolour.
Contrast this with a director like Munro. Munro writes a movie script in maybe two or three months. He directs the film too. Yet before the film gets shot, he has to find backers to finance his film. He has to line up actors and seek loacations where he's going to shoot his film. Then he and his wife, Maria who is his producer and comes from Venezuala, have to attend to a myriad of other details.
Once the film is complete where will it play? Only the big and well-publicized American films usually get shown at your local cineplex or mega- theatres .As one Canadian film director once said in effect, "I'll believe that I've made it as a director when a film of mine plays in Penticton, B.C. and all across Canada in towns like Penticton." Only a handful of Canadian directors have reached this stage of their careers.
Only once has Munro been able to get one of his films shown at the Vancouver Film Festival. His movies so far as I know, have never played for any length of time in a movie house or a cineplex. And the total amount of money he ever got back was a measly eight American dollars.
"I got that from one movie house in Seattle that showed ones of my films," Munro says.
Yet this middle-aged man keeps on pursuing his dream. He's already planning two more feature films, one about a novelist the other about a visual artist. Both will be taking place in the period from the 1930's to the 1950's.
Like me Munro is an insatiable reader who's always finding new novels to devour. He can discuss in detail many of the novels he's read, including many from Latin America. Of course he's got a family connection here since his wife is Venezulan-born.
I'm hoping one day that a Ross Munro film will break into the big time. Until then, I must remember the Canadian film directors who struggle on to get their films shown to a wide audience. "Socially," writes John Berger, "the film depends on large urban audiences."
Ross Munro hasn't found those audiences yet. I hope he will one day. And I wish the same for many other underfinanced and underpaid Canadian directors.
You often meet very interesting people at a Starbucks restaurant.
In the summer of 2015 I started to chat with Ross Munro, a 52 year-old teacher at a west side Vancouver high school. He was having his morning coffee at a Starbucks restaurant before going off to work.
Munro not only helps young people learn to cope with everyday challenges, he's also directed and scripted two feature films and two documentaries. "my first feature film cost me about $50,000 in 2000," this energetic native of Winnipeg says. "My second film will cost me about $75,000."
I saw Munro's first film called 'Brewster McGee' on my DVD machine.. It's shot in black and white and takes place in a parked car and a nearby fast food restaurant. I liked parts of it but it seemed to me to be incomplete. When I gently suggested to Munro that the film needed maybe more background or introductory material, Munro smiled.
"I could have done a lot more," he said if I'd had even more money."
In this story on underpaid if not starving artists, I've left out film directors and specifically Canadian film directors. This short piece is an attempt to fill that gap. "The film is the art " or most important art, "of the first half of the twentieth century," wrote John Berger way back in 1964. Even to-day with the rise of the Internet, a movie or at least a well-made one is still the most important work of art to-day in 2015.
Films are incredibly expensive to make and take a long time to complete. I can paint a small watercolour picture in less than three hours. my painting materials cost me less than twenty dollars. I may never sell my work but I always get a great kick from doing a watercolour.
Contrast this with a director like Munro. Munro writes a movie script in maybe two or three months. He directs the film too. Yet before the film gets shot, he has to find backers to finance his film. He has to line up actors and seek loacations where he's going to shoot his film. Then he and his wife, Maria who is his producer and comes from Venezuala, have to attend to a myriad of other details.
Once the film is complete where will it play? Only the big and well-publicized American films usually get shown at your local cineplex or mega- theatres .As one Canadian film director once said in effect, "I'll believe that I've made it as a director when a film of mine plays in Penticton, B.C. and all across Canada in towns like Penticton." Only a handful of Canadian directors have reached this stage of their careers.
Only once has Munro been able to get one of his films shown at the Vancouver Film Festival. His movies so far as I know, have never played for any length of time in a movie house or a cineplex. And the total amount of money he ever got back was a measly eight American dollars.
"I got that from one movie house in Seattle that showed ones of my films," Munro says.
Yet this middle-aged man keeps on pursuing his dream. He's already planning two more feature films, one about a novelist the other about a visual artist. Both will be taking place in the period from the 1930's to the 1950's.
Like me Munro is an insatiable reader who's always finding new novels to devour. He can discuss in detail many of the novels he's read, including many from Latin America. Of course he's got a family connection here since his wife is Venezulan-born.
I'm hoping one day that a Ross Munro film will break into the big time. Until then, I must remember the Canadian film directors who struggle on to get their films shown to a wide audience. "Socially," writes John Berger, "the film depends on large urban audiences."
Ross Munro hasn't found those audiences yet. I hope he will one day. And I wish the same for many other underfinanced and underpaid Canadian directors.
Tuesday 29 September 2015
Starving Artists - Part Seven or How Not to Starve
How Not To Be a Starving Artist
Maria Mildenberger is a visual artist who has made money from her art. She creates wall coverings from her business base in Vancouver. It's called 'The Red Palette' and Milderberger who designs surface, textiles and wall paper, has plenty of clients. She said in effect to 'The West Ender's' Jennifer Scott, "If you want to be an artist you must work hard."
This too is the underlying message of Chris Tyrell's books. Tyrell who's also based in B.C. has written two very fine books called 'Artist Survival Skills' and 'How To Make A Living As A Canadian Artist'.
I recommend both books for any person who wants to succeed in the visual arts. Tyrell's books are full of down-to-earth practical info on how to get your name and your art out into the world and make decent money doing this.
At the beginning of this story I told about an encounter I had with a woman many years ago. "Oh you're a starving artist are you?" she told me years ago when she found out what I did. There's been enough impoverished artists . Read Tyrell's books to escape that fate and learn a lot too.
Maria Mildenberger is a visual artist who has made money from her art. She creates wall coverings from her business base in Vancouver. It's called 'The Red Palette' and Milderberger who designs surface, textiles and wall paper, has plenty of clients. She said in effect to 'The West Ender's' Jennifer Scott, "If you want to be an artist you must work hard."
This too is the underlying message of Chris Tyrell's books. Tyrell who's also based in B.C. has written two very fine books called 'Artist Survival Skills' and 'How To Make A Living As A Canadian Artist'.
I recommend both books for any person who wants to succeed in the visual arts. Tyrell's books are full of down-to-earth practical info on how to get your name and your art out into the world and make decent money doing this.
At the beginning of this story I told about an encounter I had with a woman many years ago. "Oh you're a starving artist are you?" she told me years ago when she found out what I did. There's been enough impoverished artists . Read Tyrell's books to escape that fate and learn a lot too.
Thursday 24 September 2015
Starving Artists - Part Six by Dave Jaffe
Starving Artists - 19th Century U.S. Artists Drew Money
James Boggs who draws one side or two of currency bills has many imitators who copy his art work and try and pass their work off as something made by Boggs. Their art work is a version of a version of a dollar bill drawn by Boggs. How do the power structures deal with these people because they could be breaking the law at least twice?
Then there's artists who lived long before Boggs and sort of did what he did. 19th century artists like William Harnett, John Peto and John Haberle painted pictures that included very realistic looking dollar bills.
"Though their work never enjoyed intellectual prestige," writes Edward Lucie Smith in his book 'American Realism' "some had moments of popular success beyond the reach of more ambitious artists.
One of these artists William Harnett was warned by U.S. Secret Service agents not to paint dollar bills. They told him he was a counterfeiter and could go to prison."Harnett", says Edward Lucie Smith, "accepted the warning, abandoned this kind of subject." Yet when Secret Sevice agents warned John Haberle, he kept on painting pictures that included portraits or copies of dollar bills. Haberle painted a picture called 'Reproduction' that included a copy of a U.S. ten dollar bill.
These paintings belong to a type of painting called 'trompe-l'oeile' or 'trick of the eye' paintings. They were painted to be so realistic that the person looking at them would think the objects in the painting were real.
In Europe in the 19th century 'trompe-l'oeil' paintings were still filed under the heading of 'still life paintings'. About this time they disappeared in Europe as artists turned to other subjects. Yet at this time in the U.S., this type of art became very popular.
To-day, the paintings of Harnett, Peto and Haberle could sell at auctions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their works were of course popular in their lifetimes too.
Still, the careers of these men and the career of J.L.S. Boggs proves it's sometimes hard for a visual artist to make money no matter what he or she draws, sculpts or paints. Yet these days there are books that show visual artists. We'll look at them in the next part of this story.
James Boggs who draws one side or two of currency bills has many imitators who copy his art work and try and pass their work off as something made by Boggs. Their art work is a version of a version of a dollar bill drawn by Boggs. How do the power structures deal with these people because they could be breaking the law at least twice?
Then there's artists who lived long before Boggs and sort of did what he did. 19th century artists like William Harnett, John Peto and John Haberle painted pictures that included very realistic looking dollar bills.
"Though their work never enjoyed intellectual prestige," writes Edward Lucie Smith in his book 'American Realism' "some had moments of popular success beyond the reach of more ambitious artists.
One of these artists William Harnett was warned by U.S. Secret Service agents not to paint dollar bills. They told him he was a counterfeiter and could go to prison."Harnett", says Edward Lucie Smith, "accepted the warning, abandoned this kind of subject." Yet when Secret Sevice agents warned John Haberle, he kept on painting pictures that included portraits or copies of dollar bills. Haberle painted a picture called 'Reproduction' that included a copy of a U.S. ten dollar bill.
These paintings belong to a type of painting called 'trompe-l'oeile' or 'trick of the eye' paintings. They were painted to be so realistic that the person looking at them would think the objects in the painting were real.
In Europe in the 19th century 'trompe-l'oeil' paintings were still filed under the heading of 'still life paintings'. About this time they disappeared in Europe as artists turned to other subjects. Yet at this time in the U.S., this type of art became very popular.
To-day, the paintings of Harnett, Peto and Haberle could sell at auctions for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Their works were of course popular in their lifetimes too.
Still, the careers of these men and the career of J.L.S. Boggs proves it's sometimes hard for a visual artist to make money no matter what he or she draws, sculpts or paints. Yet these days there are books that show visual artists. We'll look at them in the next part of this story.
Tuesday 22 September 2015
Starving Artist - Part Five by Dave Jaffe
Starving Artist - Part Five
So far this story of poor artists has been a predictable one. It's message is very simple and sad: Most visual artists don't make much money, the message goes, and never will. Yet there are exceptions to this rule. One of them is the American visual artist named James Stephen George Boggs or 'Boggs' as he's known in the art world. Boggs makes money simply by drawing excellent copies of U.S. dollars.
Boggs, as James Weschler points out in his book on Boggs, makes money by drawing it. He has drawn one side of many U.S. dollar bills. Then Boggs tries to buy a meal or something else with his fake dollar bill.
Sometimes at the beginning of his career, waiters, food servers, salespeople and others would say in effect, "Sorry. I can't accept this. You'll have to pay me real money." Yet as Weschler goes on to say in his book on Boggs, called 'Boggs: A Comedy of Values' in the end Boggs made lots of money and became famous in several countries.
And to-day, his U.S. dollar bills sell for thousands and thousands of dollars. Of course Boggs's road to fame and fortune did hit a few bumps along the way.
In Great Britain where he drew a one-sided version of the British pound he was charged in the 1980's by the Bank of England for counterfeiting the British pound. After a juried trial in the famous Old Bailey court house, Boggs was pronounced 'Not guilty' and he was free, well sort of.
Once back in the United States Secret Service agents raided his home. They seized piles of his art work and other things like the receipts he bought from art work sales. For Boggs keeps the receipts and other things like change he gets from buying things for his art work. Often he sells receipts, change and one of his bills as a complete work of art . The Secret Service people kept Boggs's works and materials but never charged him with anything.
"But isn't this man a counterfeiter?" someone asked me when I told her about Boggs. "He's breaking the law."
This of course was or is the reason that police and others have tried to stop Boggs from making art. Yet so far the law has failed to deter him from making his art. Boggs now uses a computer to do his work and no longer draws his work with a pen. Yet the police are still interested in him.
In 2006 he was charged in Florida with having amphetamines, drug equipment and a concealed weapon in his possession. Yet he's still churning out versions of his currency. He's an artist who makes money by drawing money. In the art world that's a success story And Boggs isn't the first artist who drew a country's currency.
We'll look at some of these artists in the next chapter.
So far this story of poor artists has been a predictable one. It's message is very simple and sad: Most visual artists don't make much money, the message goes, and never will. Yet there are exceptions to this rule. One of them is the American visual artist named James Stephen George Boggs or 'Boggs' as he's known in the art world. Boggs makes money simply by drawing excellent copies of U.S. dollars.
Boggs, as James Weschler points out in his book on Boggs, makes money by drawing it. He has drawn one side of many U.S. dollar bills. Then Boggs tries to buy a meal or something else with his fake dollar bill.
Sometimes at the beginning of his career, waiters, food servers, salespeople and others would say in effect, "Sorry. I can't accept this. You'll have to pay me real money." Yet as Weschler goes on to say in his book on Boggs, called 'Boggs: A Comedy of Values' in the end Boggs made lots of money and became famous in several countries.
And to-day, his U.S. dollar bills sell for thousands and thousands of dollars. Of course Boggs's road to fame and fortune did hit a few bumps along the way.
In Great Britain where he drew a one-sided version of the British pound he was charged in the 1980's by the Bank of England for counterfeiting the British pound. After a juried trial in the famous Old Bailey court house, Boggs was pronounced 'Not guilty' and he was free, well sort of.
Once back in the United States Secret Service agents raided his home. They seized piles of his art work and other things like the receipts he bought from art work sales. For Boggs keeps the receipts and other things like change he gets from buying things for his art work. Often he sells receipts, change and one of his bills as a complete work of art . The Secret Service people kept Boggs's works and materials but never charged him with anything.
"But isn't this man a counterfeiter?" someone asked me when I told her about Boggs. "He's breaking the law."
This of course was or is the reason that police and others have tried to stop Boggs from making art. Yet so far the law has failed to deter him from making his art. Boggs now uses a computer to do his work and no longer draws his work with a pen. Yet the police are still interested in him.
In 2006 he was charged in Florida with having amphetamines, drug equipment and a concealed weapon in his possession. Yet he's still churning out versions of his currency. He's an artist who makes money by drawing money. In the art world that's a success story And Boggs isn't the first artist who drew a country's currency.
We'll look at some of these artists in the next chapter.
Thursday 3 September 2015
Starving Artists : Part Four by Dave Jaffe
Starving Artists - Part Four
Emily Carr was just not unlucky being born in 1871 and dying just before the great consumer boom started in North America in 1945. She also was unlucky by being born maybe in the wrong country, namely Canada instead of the United States.
The U.S.'s Gross National Product is at least 12 times Canada's. By the early 20th century when Carr was in her 30's, magnates like the Harrimans, the Mellons, the Carnegies, J.P. Morgan and Leland Stanford, had amassed vast fortunes. A very small part of their money went to buy fine art. In Canada by 1900 there were some multimillionaires too, but nothing of the scale of the American very rich.
So money spent on the visual arts in Canada has rarely come close to money spent on these things in the U.S. of A. Some present day Canadian artists have made some decent money. Yet their proceeds can't come close to the incomes of American artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons.
In the 1950's, the Canadian government set up the Canada Council to aid visual artists and other creative people."I'm applying for a Canada Council grant," a musician who played modern music said in the 1970's. Yet these grants that are a good thing can't make any artist lots of money.
Then, too, after 1945 and the end of the Second World war thousands of men and quite a few women went to universities and colleges to study the visual artists. This was a big change in Canada. Yet there was a downside to this trend. Competition for grants and art sales became much more intense because there were many more artists than there were in say 1930. So many artists lost out in the struggle to earn a decent living from their work.
"I can't afford to buy my own work," an artist with the Bau-Xi gallery said in Vancouver just before one of her exhibitions opened. Her paintings on the gallery's walls were priced from $5,000 to $12,000. "My work is for rich people and not for people like me."
For whatever reason, artists of all sorts keep popping up in Canada. Yet most visual artists and probably many other creative people won't get rich or earn too much money from their work.
That's just the way it is in Canada right now and will be for the foreseeable future.
Emily Carr was just not unlucky being born in 1871 and dying just before the great consumer boom started in North America in 1945. She also was unlucky by being born maybe in the wrong country, namely Canada instead of the United States.
The U.S.'s Gross National Product is at least 12 times Canada's. By the early 20th century when Carr was in her 30's, magnates like the Harrimans, the Mellons, the Carnegies, J.P. Morgan and Leland Stanford, had amassed vast fortunes. A very small part of their money went to buy fine art. In Canada by 1900 there were some multimillionaires too, but nothing of the scale of the American very rich.
So money spent on the visual arts in Canada has rarely come close to money spent on these things in the U.S. of A. Some present day Canadian artists have made some decent money. Yet their proceeds can't come close to the incomes of American artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol or Jeff Koons.
In the 1950's, the Canadian government set up the Canada Council to aid visual artists and other creative people."I'm applying for a Canada Council grant," a musician who played modern music said in the 1970's. Yet these grants that are a good thing can't make any artist lots of money.
Then, too, after 1945 and the end of the Second World war thousands of men and quite a few women went to universities and colleges to study the visual artists. This was a big change in Canada. Yet there was a downside to this trend. Competition for grants and art sales became much more intense because there were many more artists than there were in say 1930. So many artists lost out in the struggle to earn a decent living from their work.
"I can't afford to buy my own work," an artist with the Bau-Xi gallery said in Vancouver just before one of her exhibitions opened. Her paintings on the gallery's walls were priced from $5,000 to $12,000. "My work is for rich people and not for people like me."
For whatever reason, artists of all sorts keep popping up in Canada. Yet most visual artists and probably many other creative people won't get rich or earn too much money from their work.
That's just the way it is in Canada right now and will be for the foreseeable future.
Monday 31 August 2015
Starving Artists: Part Three by Dave Jaffe
Starving Artists - Part Three
Emily Carr was just plain unlucky. She is one of British Columbia's most famous visual artists. Yet she lived most of her adult life in poverty. When she was born in Victoria, B.C, in 1871 into a middle class family, there were very few traditional visual artists in British Columbia.
First Nations people had carved some magnificent totem poles. Artists in the British navy drew landscapes that could be used for military purposes and naval journeys. Yet elsewhere in B.C. there weren't too many visual artists around. Of course there weren't too many white people around either. And money for the visual arts was scarce too.
By the time Carr died in 1945, the art world of North America was on the cusp of a great change. A new affluent world emerged after 1945 in the United States and then spread across the western world. It was based on the car, the suburban tract home, television, the jet plane and the credit card. And tax laws concerned with the visual arts changed too.
"The American government passed a law," writes John Berger, "which allowed income tax relief to any citizen giving a work of art to an American museum. The relief was immediate." Yet the art didn't go to the museum until after the owner died.
In Britain the government passed laws that tried to stop art works from leaving Britain as exports. A rich person's heirs could now pay the deceased's death duties with art not money. "Both pieces of legislation," adds Berger, "increased prices in sales rooms throughout the art loving world."
Then, too, the massive spending by the governments of the United States and other western countries during the Cold War poured billions of dollars, pounds and other currencies into people's pockets. Some of this ended up in the art world, and also helped push up prices in the art galleries.
Visual art became a commodity like everything else.
Yet Emily Carr and many others saw none of this new affluence. After the age of 40 she was poor and remained poor for the rest of her life. She became a landlord, a breeder of animals, a writer of books, and a worker at many other tasks. She had to do this to survive for she never made much money from her paintings.
Flash forward to 2015. Charles Ray is an American sculptor, now based in Santa Monica, California. Ray's huge life like sculptures sell for two or three million dollars apiece. Ray doesn't get all of this money. His dealer Matthew Marks takes some of the money off the top for himself. Yet every year a museum or rich people snap up one of more of Ray's works.
Ray is not a very rich man. He pours most of a lot of his proceeds from sales into his studio. Still, he lives on a privileged plateau that Emily Carr and many other artists of the past could only dream about. "Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," said Andy Warhol who died a very rich man and who was famous for a lot longer than fifteen minutes.
Warhol, Charles Ray Jeff Koons and other fortunate visual artists made or make millions of dollars from their work. Emily Carr never had their luck. She was just born too early.
Emily Carr was just plain unlucky. She is one of British Columbia's most famous visual artists. Yet she lived most of her adult life in poverty. When she was born in Victoria, B.C, in 1871 into a middle class family, there were very few traditional visual artists in British Columbia.
First Nations people had carved some magnificent totem poles. Artists in the British navy drew landscapes that could be used for military purposes and naval journeys. Yet elsewhere in B.C. there weren't too many visual artists around. Of course there weren't too many white people around either. And money for the visual arts was scarce too.
By the time Carr died in 1945, the art world of North America was on the cusp of a great change. A new affluent world emerged after 1945 in the United States and then spread across the western world. It was based on the car, the suburban tract home, television, the jet plane and the credit card. And tax laws concerned with the visual arts changed too.
"The American government passed a law," writes John Berger, "which allowed income tax relief to any citizen giving a work of art to an American museum. The relief was immediate." Yet the art didn't go to the museum until after the owner died.
In Britain the government passed laws that tried to stop art works from leaving Britain as exports. A rich person's heirs could now pay the deceased's death duties with art not money. "Both pieces of legislation," adds Berger, "increased prices in sales rooms throughout the art loving world."
Then, too, the massive spending by the governments of the United States and other western countries during the Cold War poured billions of dollars, pounds and other currencies into people's pockets. Some of this ended up in the art world, and also helped push up prices in the art galleries.
Visual art became a commodity like everything else.
Yet Emily Carr and many others saw none of this new affluence. After the age of 40 she was poor and remained poor for the rest of her life. She became a landlord, a breeder of animals, a writer of books, and a worker at many other tasks. She had to do this to survive for she never made much money from her paintings.
Flash forward to 2015. Charles Ray is an American sculptor, now based in Santa Monica, California. Ray's huge life like sculptures sell for two or three million dollars apiece. Ray doesn't get all of this money. His dealer Matthew Marks takes some of the money off the top for himself. Yet every year a museum or rich people snap up one of more of Ray's works.
Ray is not a very rich man. He pours most of a lot of his proceeds from sales into his studio. Still, he lives on a privileged plateau that Emily Carr and many other artists of the past could only dream about. "Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," said Andy Warhol who died a very rich man and who was famous for a lot longer than fifteen minutes.
Warhol, Charles Ray Jeff Koons and other fortunate visual artists made or make millions of dollars from their work. Emily Carr never had their luck. She was just born too early.
Thursday 20 August 2015
'Starving Artists' Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Starving Artists: Part Two
The life of D.H. Lawrence mentioned in part one of this blog was an extreme life. Few novelists, painters, or poets have aroused so much anger from the powerful as Lawrence did. Lawrence attacked in his novels the prudishness of Victorian England and paid a terrible price for doing so.
Yet the poverty that Lawrence sometimes endured was also a burden to many other creative people, especially visual artists.
Alberto Giacometti was born in Switzerland in the early part of the 20th century. One of his sculptures was recently sold for nearly $120 million (U.S.). Yet Giacometti spent half of his adult life living in poverty in two tiny rooms in a house in Paris. His brother Diego lived down the hall in a space as cramped as his brother's living quarters.
"Giacometti was a most extreme artist," wrote John Berger. "He based all his mature work on the proposition that no reality could ever be shared." Giacometti's sculptures are black in colour or grey. His figures are also very thin and look nearly anorectic. Giacometti became famous in the late 1940's. many people back then thought he was copying pictures of starving people who had just survived the recently closed Nazi death camps.
Giacometti was soon flush with cash. By now he was in his mid-forties. He died 20 years later in 1966 from pneumonia. His smoking surely speeded up his death. Yet the 20 years of his adult life, living as a poor man, didn't help extend his life either.
Giacometti wasn't the only one of the early 20th century's famous artists who spent a large part of his life in poverty. Piet Mondrian was another. Mondrian became one of the most famous abstract artists who's ever lived. Born in Holland, Mondrian was nearly 40 when he discovered cubist paintings in Paris.
Mondrian then joined the Dutch art movement called 'de Stilj' or 'The Style'. Mondrian stopped painting the somewhat moody paintings of his youth and early middle age. He switched to abstraction. His paintings focused on the square, vertical and horizontal lines, and the colours black, white, red, yellow and blue.
"We come to see that the principal problems in plastic art," Mondrian wrote," is not to avoid representation of objects, but to be as objective as possible." Mondrian died in New York City in the mid-1940's, having fled war torn Europe. His paintings like 'New York Boogie Woogie' and the unfinished 'Victory Boogie Woogie' are reproduced in most art history books and to-day are worth tens of millions of dollars.
Yet in his lifetime he lived for the most part as a poor artist. So did others.
The life of D.H. Lawrence mentioned in part one of this blog was an extreme life. Few novelists, painters, or poets have aroused so much anger from the powerful as Lawrence did. Lawrence attacked in his novels the prudishness of Victorian England and paid a terrible price for doing so.
Yet the poverty that Lawrence sometimes endured was also a burden to many other creative people, especially visual artists.
Alberto Giacometti was born in Switzerland in the early part of the 20th century. One of his sculptures was recently sold for nearly $120 million (U.S.). Yet Giacometti spent half of his adult life living in poverty in two tiny rooms in a house in Paris. His brother Diego lived down the hall in a space as cramped as his brother's living quarters.
"Giacometti was a most extreme artist," wrote John Berger. "He based all his mature work on the proposition that no reality could ever be shared." Giacometti's sculptures are black in colour or grey. His figures are also very thin and look nearly anorectic. Giacometti became famous in the late 1940's. many people back then thought he was copying pictures of starving people who had just survived the recently closed Nazi death camps.
Giacometti was soon flush with cash. By now he was in his mid-forties. He died 20 years later in 1966 from pneumonia. His smoking surely speeded up his death. Yet the 20 years of his adult life, living as a poor man, didn't help extend his life either.
Giacometti wasn't the only one of the early 20th century's famous artists who spent a large part of his life in poverty. Piet Mondrian was another. Mondrian became one of the most famous abstract artists who's ever lived. Born in Holland, Mondrian was nearly 40 when he discovered cubist paintings in Paris.
Mondrian then joined the Dutch art movement called 'de Stilj' or 'The Style'. Mondrian stopped painting the somewhat moody paintings of his youth and early middle age. He switched to abstraction. His paintings focused on the square, vertical and horizontal lines, and the colours black, white, red, yellow and blue.
"We come to see that the principal problems in plastic art," Mondrian wrote," is not to avoid representation of objects, but to be as objective as possible." Mondrian died in New York City in the mid-1940's, having fled war torn Europe. His paintings like 'New York Boogie Woogie' and the unfinished 'Victory Boogie Woogie' are reproduced in most art history books and to-day are worth tens of millions of dollars.
Yet in his lifetime he lived for the most part as a poor artist. So did others.
Wednesday 19 August 2015
Starving Artists by Dave Jaffe Part One
Starving Artists Part One
"Oh, you're a starving artist are you?" a sarcastic woman once said when I told her what I did. "How interesting." This woman aimed to hurt me and she did. Yet her comment wasn't far off-base. Most Canadian artists don't starve to death. Yet they don't make much money either.
In 2014, 136,000 Canadians called themselves 'artists'. Their median income totalled as little less than $22,000 a year. The median income for all Canadians came in far higher at a little less than $38,000 annually.
So most artists are or were poor. And when they are poor they're travelling a well-worn path. Take David Herbert Richard Lawrence for example. Known in the history books as D.H. Lawrence, he wrote some of the great English novels of the early 20th century. 'The Rainbow', 'Women In Love' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' are or used to be part of many English literature courses.
Yet Lawrence never saw much money from these novels or from his poetry, criticism or travelogues. This son of a coal miner and a middle class mother, became a teacher in the English midlands. He wrote his first novel 'The White Peacock' before the First World War. In 1912 he eloped with the German wife of one of his former teachers. Lawrence then left teaching but never made much money after this.
"'The Rainbow' and 'Women In Love'," says a biographical sketch of Lawrence, "were completed in 1915 and 1916." Yet "The Rainbow''s sexual frankness enraged the British government and no publisher would handle 'Women In Love'. Lawrence and his wife, the former Frieda von Richtoffen faced persecution in wartime England. The authorities had a particular disike to Frieda von Richtoffen because her brother was the famous German flying ace Baron von Richtoffen, who was shooting down English pilots in the skies above France during the First World War.
The First World War ended in 1918. Four years later Lawrence and Frieda left their country England and travelled through large parts of the world. They had little money and Lawrence's last novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', was banned because of its frank language and its love making scenes. Lawrence died in 1929 from tubercolosis at the age of 44.
"In his writing," wrote Frieda von Richtoffen," Lawrence gave us the splendour of living. It was a heroic and immeasurable gift." Yet from his mid-twenties on, Lawrence lived in poverty and exile. While he lived below the poverty level so did many other gifted, creative artists. But it's also fair to say that before 1945 most people in the world were also poor.
"Oh, you're a starving artist are you?" a sarcastic woman once said when I told her what I did. "How interesting." This woman aimed to hurt me and she did. Yet her comment wasn't far off-base. Most Canadian artists don't starve to death. Yet they don't make much money either.
In 2014, 136,000 Canadians called themselves 'artists'. Their median income totalled as little less than $22,000 a year. The median income for all Canadians came in far higher at a little less than $38,000 annually.
So most artists are or were poor. And when they are poor they're travelling a well-worn path. Take David Herbert Richard Lawrence for example. Known in the history books as D.H. Lawrence, he wrote some of the great English novels of the early 20th century. 'The Rainbow', 'Women In Love' and 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' are or used to be part of many English literature courses.
Yet Lawrence never saw much money from these novels or from his poetry, criticism or travelogues. This son of a coal miner and a middle class mother, became a teacher in the English midlands. He wrote his first novel 'The White Peacock' before the First World War. In 1912 he eloped with the German wife of one of his former teachers. Lawrence then left teaching but never made much money after this.
"'The Rainbow' and 'Women In Love'," says a biographical sketch of Lawrence, "were completed in 1915 and 1916." Yet "The Rainbow''s sexual frankness enraged the British government and no publisher would handle 'Women In Love'. Lawrence and his wife, the former Frieda von Richtoffen faced persecution in wartime England. The authorities had a particular disike to Frieda von Richtoffen because her brother was the famous German flying ace Baron von Richtoffen, who was shooting down English pilots in the skies above France during the First World War.
The First World War ended in 1918. Four years later Lawrence and Frieda left their country England and travelled through large parts of the world. They had little money and Lawrence's last novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover', was banned because of its frank language and its love making scenes. Lawrence died in 1929 from tubercolosis at the age of 44.
"In his writing," wrote Frieda von Richtoffen," Lawrence gave us the splendour of living. It was a heroic and immeasurable gift." Yet from his mid-twenties on, Lawrence lived in poverty and exile. While he lived below the poverty level so did many other gifted, creative artists. But it's also fair to say that before 1945 most people in the world were also poor.
Saturday 8 August 2015
An Unknown Artist Gets Known: Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Part Two of 'An Unknown Artist Gets Known'
George Fertig's paintings usually fall into one of three types.
First came conventional paintings of trees growing by rivers or seas. Then Fertig painted many pictures of fruits, either just one fruit or two . Last but not least, Fertig painted pictures that were spiritual in intent. These paintings were influenced by the work of the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. In these works, big and small moons stand out against dark skies and usually loom over plants that come out of the sea.
"George was now known among his friends and fellow artists as the 'Moon Man'," writes Mona Fertig. "He painted huge primordial images that filled the walls in our damp basement suite in Kitsilano."
By the late 1950's George Fertig was now a married man with a wife and two daughters. He worked in blue collar jobs and was a left leaning progressive. Later he stopped working to concentrate on his art. He spent most of his time painting pictures but also branched out into pottery.
He, his wife Eva Luxa, and their two daughters spent many years in poverty. Fertig's art was often ignored by the Vancouver art establishment. Artists like Jack Shadbolt, Takao Tanabe, Roy Kiyooka, B.C. Binning and others thrived because they were connected to the
Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vancouver School of Art. They also nearly all painted in an abstract style. Fertig was mostly self taught. He never taught at the Vancouver School of Art or could count on getting his pictures shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Mona Fertig touches on this point but it needs to be connected to the wider world of the fine arts. In the late 1940's, a Cold War erupted between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. As Serge Guilbault points out in his book 'How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art', the Central Intelligence Agency backed the art called 'Abstract Expressionism'.
Abstract painters like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning and Franz Kline were lauded as great painters - which they were. Yet they followed or founded the school of art called Abstract Expressionism. Other types of art, like George Fertig's, were shut out of the art world. As part of this world wide trend, the Vancouver Art Gallery changed into an exclusive organization that welcomed artists like Jack Shadbolt and his friends who painted in an abstract style. Shadbolt in the late 1940's quickly switched from painting realistic works to becoming an abstract painter. Others followed suit. Those that did not, like George Fertig were left out in the cold.
Fertig had no chance to get shown widely as he was confronting powerful forces, that operated not only in Vancouver, but around the western world.
Professor Peter Such says in his introduction to Mona Fertig's book, "It takes tremendous courage to plumb the depths of mystical life." George Fertig did this and thanks are due to his daughter Mona. She has finally lifted the veil of obscurity that lay over her dad's life until now.
George Fertig's paintings usually fall into one of three types.
First came conventional paintings of trees growing by rivers or seas. Then Fertig painted many pictures of fruits, either just one fruit or two . Last but not least, Fertig painted pictures that were spiritual in intent. These paintings were influenced by the work of the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. In these works, big and small moons stand out against dark skies and usually loom over plants that come out of the sea.
"George was now known among his friends and fellow artists as the 'Moon Man'," writes Mona Fertig. "He painted huge primordial images that filled the walls in our damp basement suite in Kitsilano."
By the late 1950's George Fertig was now a married man with a wife and two daughters. He worked in blue collar jobs and was a left leaning progressive. Later he stopped working to concentrate on his art. He spent most of his time painting pictures but also branched out into pottery.
He, his wife Eva Luxa, and their two daughters spent many years in poverty. Fertig's art was often ignored by the Vancouver art establishment. Artists like Jack Shadbolt, Takao Tanabe, Roy Kiyooka, B.C. Binning and others thrived because they were connected to the
Vancouver Art Gallery and the Vancouver School of Art. They also nearly all painted in an abstract style. Fertig was mostly self taught. He never taught at the Vancouver School of Art or could count on getting his pictures shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
Mona Fertig touches on this point but it needs to be connected to the wider world of the fine arts. In the late 1940's, a Cold War erupted between the United States of America and the Soviet Union. As Serge Guilbault points out in his book 'How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art', the Central Intelligence Agency backed the art called 'Abstract Expressionism'.
Abstract painters like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning and Franz Kline were lauded as great painters - which they were. Yet they followed or founded the school of art called Abstract Expressionism. Other types of art, like George Fertig's, were shut out of the art world. As part of this world wide trend, the Vancouver Art Gallery changed into an exclusive organization that welcomed artists like Jack Shadbolt and his friends who painted in an abstract style. Shadbolt in the late 1940's quickly switched from painting realistic works to becoming an abstract painter. Others followed suit. Those that did not, like George Fertig were left out in the cold.
Fertig had no chance to get shown widely as he was confronting powerful forces, that operated not only in Vancouver, but around the western world.
Professor Peter Such says in his introduction to Mona Fertig's book, "It takes tremendous courage to plumb the depths of mystical life." George Fertig did this and thanks are due to his daughter Mona. She has finally lifted the veil of obscurity that lay over her dad's life until now.
Friday 7 August 2015
An Unknown Artist gets Known by Dave Jaffe: Part One
An Unknown Artist Gets Known by Dave Jaffe
"Success has a thousand parents," U.S. president John Fitzgerald Kennedy said way back in the 1960's. "But failure is an orphan."
By mainstream standards , the late George Fertig, who was a Vancouver based artist, probably did fail. He's surely not mentioned in any Canadian art history book. Few artists ever said they'd influenced him. And his paintings never made it into most public art galleries. Also for long stretches of his life, he endured grinding poverty.
Yet out in the real world there's thousands of artists like George Fertig. Without them, the Canadian art scene would be much poorer.
Now Fertig's life has been written about by one of his two daughters, Mona Fertig. Her book is called 'The Life and Art of George Fertig'. Mona Fertig has set up 'Mother Tongue Publishing Ltd' and has unearthed many other forgotten B.C. visual artists. Mona Fertig is a poet, a publisher as already mentioned, an author many times over and now a biographer of her dad. This is a story worth telling.
George Thane Fertig was born into small town Alberta in 1915. He lived in a sod house for a while as his mother and father braved life on the prairies. George's father George Samuel Fertig gambled and was a drinker. He gambled away his property and the family fell onto desperate times. George's mother Grace Faulkner held the family together as they moved from one place to another.
Any time is a bad time to be poor but the Fertigs had chosen the worst time of all. They grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930's. "The Great Depression," writes Mona Fertig, "combined with years of drought in the West, brought massive unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy, soup kitchens and destitution."
The elder George Fertig died in the 1930's. The young George went through a nervous breakdown. Yet then he took up photography, and then in his twenties began to paint in oils. in the late 1940's, Fertig ended up in Vancouver where he stayed for the rest of his life. Here he launched himself on his artistic career and faced many obstacles in the process.
(To Be continued: End of Part One).
"Success has a thousand parents," U.S. president John Fitzgerald Kennedy said way back in the 1960's. "But failure is an orphan."
By mainstream standards , the late George Fertig, who was a Vancouver based artist, probably did fail. He's surely not mentioned in any Canadian art history book. Few artists ever said they'd influenced him. And his paintings never made it into most public art galleries. Also for long stretches of his life, he endured grinding poverty.
Yet out in the real world there's thousands of artists like George Fertig. Without them, the Canadian art scene would be much poorer.
Now Fertig's life has been written about by one of his two daughters, Mona Fertig. Her book is called 'The Life and Art of George Fertig'. Mona Fertig has set up 'Mother Tongue Publishing Ltd' and has unearthed many other forgotten B.C. visual artists. Mona Fertig is a poet, a publisher as already mentioned, an author many times over and now a biographer of her dad. This is a story worth telling.
George Thane Fertig was born into small town Alberta in 1915. He lived in a sod house for a while as his mother and father braved life on the prairies. George's father George Samuel Fertig gambled and was a drinker. He gambled away his property and the family fell onto desperate times. George's mother Grace Faulkner held the family together as they moved from one place to another.
Any time is a bad time to be poor but the Fertigs had chosen the worst time of all. They grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930's. "The Great Depression," writes Mona Fertig, "combined with years of drought in the West, brought massive unemployment, poverty, bankruptcy, soup kitchens and destitution."
The elder George Fertig died in the 1930's. The young George went through a nervous breakdown. Yet then he took up photography, and then in his twenties began to paint in oils. in the late 1940's, Fertig ended up in Vancouver where he stayed for the rest of his life. Here he launched himself on his artistic career and faced many obstacles in the process.
(To Be continued: End of Part One).
Tuesday 4 August 2015
John Berger Versus Francis Bacon;Who was Right Part Three
Part Three of Berger Versus Bacon: Who Was Right? by Dave Jaffe
In her book on Francis Bacon, author Kitty Hauser mentions John Berger comparing Francis Bacon's figures to those of Walt Disney's. I get the impression that Hauser didn't like this comparison.
Yet one artist I knew in the 1980's liked that comparison a lot. "Berger is really different from most art critics," Roger Jansen, a tall bearded artist and baker said in effect. "His comparison amazed me and I thought it was so true."
Now time moves on. Francis Bacon died in 1992. John Berger went on writing. Then in 2004, a show of Bacon's works was held in France where Berger has lived for many years. Berger went to see the show and he was impressed.
In a story Berger wrote for the U.K.-based weekly 'The Guardian', Berger switched positions on Bacon and his work. Now he saw Bacon's paintings as a key to understanding the state of the world. Bacon, Berger concluded, saw the world as a brutal place. 'Pitiless' was the word Berger used. And Berger said Bacon got it right.
Bacon's views according to Berger, matched the world outside the gallery's doors. The year before the show opened in France, NATO forces led by the United States, had invaded Iraq. They overthrew the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, but then went on to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and penned up others in horrible prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
In Abu Ghraib, guards, who were mostly Americans, tortured, beat and water boarded their prisoners. Pictures show some guards really enjoying torturing their prisoners. All of this took place against a backdrop of what came to be known as '9/11'. On September 9, 2001 a group of men from Saudi Arabia and Morocco hijacked American planes and ploughed into the World Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. All the hijackers died as did the passengers on the planes and over 2,000 people who were mostly Americans.
"Those who are not with us," said then-U.S. president George W. Bush "are against us." The Cold War had ended ten years before. Now a new world wide war, ' The War On Terror' had begun. It's still going on in 2015.
Berger surely saw this and realized that the idealism of his youth and middle age had been misplaced. The world was indeed a pitiless place. So put John Berger in the camp of disappointed idealists, as Kitty Hauser pointed out in her book on Bacon. Put me there too.
So though Bacon's view of life is probably right maybe John Berger got it right too - at least once. In the late 1960's, Berger like myself and millions of others thought that progressive forces would win many victories and sweep the world. Yet by 1972, the year Berger first wrote about Bacon, he and others knew that the dreams of the 1960's had been a mirage. Yet Berger remained an idealist. Still, now a man in his eighties, Berger could no longer deny that the world was indeed pitiless.
"Game, set and match," tennis announcers say at court side when a tennis game is won by one contestant or another.So game set, and match to Francis Bacon who stands out as one of the great figurative painters of the 20th century. Yet I still wish he had been wrong in his view of human beings.
In her book on Francis Bacon, author Kitty Hauser mentions John Berger comparing Francis Bacon's figures to those of Walt Disney's. I get the impression that Hauser didn't like this comparison.
Yet one artist I knew in the 1980's liked that comparison a lot. "Berger is really different from most art critics," Roger Jansen, a tall bearded artist and baker said in effect. "His comparison amazed me and I thought it was so true."
Now time moves on. Francis Bacon died in 1992. John Berger went on writing. Then in 2004, a show of Bacon's works was held in France where Berger has lived for many years. Berger went to see the show and he was impressed.
In a story Berger wrote for the U.K.-based weekly 'The Guardian', Berger switched positions on Bacon and his work. Now he saw Bacon's paintings as a key to understanding the state of the world. Bacon, Berger concluded, saw the world as a brutal place. 'Pitiless' was the word Berger used. And Berger said Bacon got it right.
Bacon's views according to Berger, matched the world outside the gallery's doors. The year before the show opened in France, NATO forces led by the United States, had invaded Iraq. They overthrew the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein, but then went on to kill tens of thousands of Iraqis and penned up others in horrible prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
In Abu Ghraib, guards, who were mostly Americans, tortured, beat and water boarded their prisoners. Pictures show some guards really enjoying torturing their prisoners. All of this took place against a backdrop of what came to be known as '9/11'. On September 9, 2001 a group of men from Saudi Arabia and Morocco hijacked American planes and ploughed into the World Trade Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. All the hijackers died as did the passengers on the planes and over 2,000 people who were mostly Americans.
"Those who are not with us," said then-U.S. president George W. Bush "are against us." The Cold War had ended ten years before. Now a new world wide war, ' The War On Terror' had begun. It's still going on in 2015.
Berger surely saw this and realized that the idealism of his youth and middle age had been misplaced. The world was indeed a pitiless place. So put John Berger in the camp of disappointed idealists, as Kitty Hauser pointed out in her book on Bacon. Put me there too.
So though Bacon's view of life is probably right maybe John Berger got it right too - at least once. In the late 1960's, Berger like myself and millions of others thought that progressive forces would win many victories and sweep the world. Yet by 1972, the year Berger first wrote about Bacon, he and others knew that the dreams of the 1960's had been a mirage. Yet Berger remained an idealist. Still, now a man in his eighties, Berger could no longer deny that the world was indeed pitiless.
"Game, set and match," tennis announcers say at court side when a tennis game is won by one contestant or another.So game set, and match to Francis Bacon who stands out as one of the great figurative painters of the 20th century. Yet I still wish he had been wrong in his view of human beings.
Friday 31 July 2015
John Berger Versus Francis Bacon -Part Two by Dave Jaffe
Part Two of John Berger Versus Francis Bacon
"Anatomy is destiny," Sigmund Freud once said. Yet destiny often hangs on a lot more than your gender. You face different futures if you're born into a middle class home rather than a poor one.Your genetic inheritance impacts heavily on your life too. Childhood and teenage experiences can weigh heavily on your future also.
Now Francis Bacon and John Berger lived very different early lives. Bacon was born to a sadistic horse training father and a wealthy mother. His father loathed Francis because he was gay. He got some of his grooms to whip his son. As a child Bacon lived in an Ireland that was being torn apart by a civil war. On one side were the Sinn Fein who launched a successful uprising in 1919 that eventually threw the British out of most of Ireland.
Then there were the British troops that fought Sinn Fein. Bacon used to hear the British
troops outside his home. From an early age then, Bacon felt the tensions of life inside his house and outside it.
Bacon was gay and due to this and other reasons, Bacon's father told him to leave his home when Bacon was 16. Bacon then travelled to Berlin, Paris and then London where he stayed. To survive a life in the streets, Bacon sold his body to men, stole goods from people, worked as a servant, a job he never lasted at, and often skipped out of his rent.
His early life impressed upon Bacon that as the 17th century Thomas Hobbes once said that life, it was "nasty, brutish and short." In the second world war, the London-based Bacon worked in civil defence. Yet his asthma prevented him from joining the regular army.
No wonder Bacon saw life as a brutal struggle for existence. And his name, that was the same as the famous 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon may have confused and hurt him too.
Berger's childhood seems to have been much nicer than Bacon's. His parents weren't rich like Bacon's yet they didn't beat him. Berger went to arts schools and ended up teaching drawing and painting. He then started to write art criticism and then novels. He also served in the armed forces in world war two and at one time was posted to Northern Ireland that was now separate from the independent country of Eire. It was still part of Great Britain.
"When I was in my thirties," Berger once wrote about his mother, "she told me for the first time that ever since I was born she hoped I'd be a writer."
Yet she didn't read most of his books. Still she seems to have been a good mother. Berger's father did hang out with his son sometimes. "My father used to take me to the zoo," Berger once wrote. Yet he also admitted "that going to the zoo is one of my few happy childhood memories."
So Berger's childhood had its ups and downs. Yet it had little or none of the violence and trauma of Bacon's.
Berger joined the British Communist Party when he was in his twenties. Then he left it. Yet he remained an idealist and a progressive. His early years surely put him on a path that differed a lot from Francis Bacon's.
.
"Anatomy is destiny," Sigmund Freud once said. Yet destiny often hangs on a lot more than your gender. You face different futures if you're born into a middle class home rather than a poor one.Your genetic inheritance impacts heavily on your life too. Childhood and teenage experiences can weigh heavily on your future also.
Now Francis Bacon and John Berger lived very different early lives. Bacon was born to a sadistic horse training father and a wealthy mother. His father loathed Francis because he was gay. He got some of his grooms to whip his son. As a child Bacon lived in an Ireland that was being torn apart by a civil war. On one side were the Sinn Fein who launched a successful uprising in 1919 that eventually threw the British out of most of Ireland.
Then there were the British troops that fought Sinn Fein. Bacon used to hear the British
troops outside his home. From an early age then, Bacon felt the tensions of life inside his house and outside it.
Bacon was gay and due to this and other reasons, Bacon's father told him to leave his home when Bacon was 16. Bacon then travelled to Berlin, Paris and then London where he stayed. To survive a life in the streets, Bacon sold his body to men, stole goods from people, worked as a servant, a job he never lasted at, and often skipped out of his rent.
His early life impressed upon Bacon that as the 17th century Thomas Hobbes once said that life, it was "nasty, brutish and short." In the second world war, the London-based Bacon worked in civil defence. Yet his asthma prevented him from joining the regular army.
No wonder Bacon saw life as a brutal struggle for existence. And his name, that was the same as the famous 17th century philosopher Francis Bacon may have confused and hurt him too.
Berger's childhood seems to have been much nicer than Bacon's. His parents weren't rich like Bacon's yet they didn't beat him. Berger went to arts schools and ended up teaching drawing and painting. He then started to write art criticism and then novels. He also served in the armed forces in world war two and at one time was posted to Northern Ireland that was now separate from the independent country of Eire. It was still part of Great Britain.
"When I was in my thirties," Berger once wrote about his mother, "she told me for the first time that ever since I was born she hoped I'd be a writer."
Yet she didn't read most of his books. Still she seems to have been a good mother. Berger's father did hang out with his son sometimes. "My father used to take me to the zoo," Berger once wrote. Yet he also admitted "that going to the zoo is one of my few happy childhood memories."
So Berger's childhood had its ups and downs. Yet it had little or none of the violence and trauma of Bacon's.
Berger joined the British Communist Party when he was in his twenties. Then he left it. Yet he remained an idealist and a progressive. His early years surely put him on a path that differed a lot from Francis Bacon's.
.
Wednesday 29 July 2015
John Berger Versus Francis Bacon: Who Was Right? Part One by Dave Jaffe
Berger Versus Bacon by Dave Jaffe
In 1972 in the pages of a British weekly, a great writer discussed the paintings of a famous British visual artist.
The writer was John Berger, then in his mid-forties. Berger had been a visual artist and then had carved out a career as a novelist, screen writer and art critic. The visual artist was Francis Bacon then in his sixties.
The Irish-born Bacon painted human figures, which were often distorted anguished creatures placed in usually airtight rooms. The figures were nearly always men. Bacon's paintings had made him rich and famous.
According to author Kitty Hauser who wrote a book on Bacon, Berger didn't like Bacon's work because his paintings didn't condemn the suffering in his work. Berger at the time was a Marxist and he surely wouldn't have agreed with Bacon's views on life.
Bacon had once said about life, "It's all so meaningless." When he wasn't painting,the openly gay Bacon spent his time in London's inner city. Here he gambled, had sex with men, drank and then went to more upscale places where he hobnobbed with the rich and the famous.
Bacon not only saw life as meaningless. He had little time for idealists like John Berger. For Bacon life was a brutal struggle for existence and anyone who tried to improve people's lives or fought for social justice were just wasting their time.
Berger did praise the power in Bacon's work. Yet he obviously didn't agree with Bacon's views on life as Bacon had set them out in long interviews with the art critic David Sylvester. "The worst that has happened for Bacon," Berger wrote, "has nothing to do with the blood, the stains and the viscera " in his work. "The worst is that man has come to be seen as mindless."
Berger compared Bacon's works with those of Walt Disney's. Disney's cartoons, says Berger, turn mindless, violent alienated behaviour into comedy. So people come to accept this sort of behaviour. "What Disney's creatures lack," writes Berger, "is mind." And Bacon's creatures like Disney's are also mindless.
(End of Part One)
In 1972 in the pages of a British weekly, a great writer discussed the paintings of a famous British visual artist.
The writer was John Berger, then in his mid-forties. Berger had been a visual artist and then had carved out a career as a novelist, screen writer and art critic. The visual artist was Francis Bacon then in his sixties.
The Irish-born Bacon painted human figures, which were often distorted anguished creatures placed in usually airtight rooms. The figures were nearly always men. Bacon's paintings had made him rich and famous.
According to author Kitty Hauser who wrote a book on Bacon, Berger didn't like Bacon's work because his paintings didn't condemn the suffering in his work. Berger at the time was a Marxist and he surely wouldn't have agreed with Bacon's views on life.
Bacon had once said about life, "It's all so meaningless." When he wasn't painting,the openly gay Bacon spent his time in London's inner city. Here he gambled, had sex with men, drank and then went to more upscale places where he hobnobbed with the rich and the famous.
Bacon not only saw life as meaningless. He had little time for idealists like John Berger. For Bacon life was a brutal struggle for existence and anyone who tried to improve people's lives or fought for social justice were just wasting their time.
Berger did praise the power in Bacon's work. Yet he obviously didn't agree with Bacon's views on life as Bacon had set them out in long interviews with the art critic David Sylvester. "The worst that has happened for Bacon," Berger wrote, "has nothing to do with the blood, the stains and the viscera " in his work. "The worst is that man has come to be seen as mindless."
Berger compared Bacon's works with those of Walt Disney's. Disney's cartoons, says Berger, turn mindless, violent alienated behaviour into comedy. So people come to accept this sort of behaviour. "What Disney's creatures lack," writes Berger, "is mind." And Bacon's creatures like Disney's are also mindless.
(End of Part One)
Monday 27 July 2015
Andy And His Art - Andy Warhol Part Four
Andy And His Art - Part Four
Andy Warhol's rise in the art world coincided with a massive increase in art prices. "Corporate capitalism has begun to adopt abstract art," wrote John Berger in the 1970's.Yet soon corporate capitalism and its CEO's started to adopt and buy all kinds of art.
In the early 1980's, 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes noted with alarm the then-massive prices paid by the super rich for art masterpieces.
A mediocre Picasso painting from the early 1920's sold 60 years later for $3 million American. Yet by 2015 art prices for some works went through the roof. A Picasso painting in 2015 raked in nearly $180 million. An Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for over $100 million. Now Andy Warhol didn't cause these nearly four fold rise in prices - adjusted for inflation that is.
Part of the reason for this massive rise in prices for art was the rise of financial services and their increasing role in the world economy. "Americans used to make money making things," one financial analyst said. "Now they make money by making money." Trillions of dollars and other currencies slosh around in the world's financial markets every day, and their owners were looking for a place to park their money and make money doing this. So the art world soon became a place for the rich to spend their cash and make money doing this.
Warhol couldn't raise the price of art masterpieces by himself. Still, his lifestyle, his massive buying sprees and his joy in being rich, changed forever the image of visual artists. Warhol's actions supported the new trends in art prices.
It's true that Warhol also made movies, invented so-called movie stars and tried to mimic Hollywood - or make fun of it. Yet with the exception of one or two of his movies and his founding of the rock group, 'The Velvet Underground' Warhol will be remembered for his paintings and silk screened images. "When does this film start?" one viewer asked after watching Warhol's film 'Empire' for about 10 minutes. In this movie Warhol just trained a stationary camera at the top of the Empire State building in New York City. And the film just went on like that for hours on end. It bored many viewers who just walked out of the theatre where the movie was being shown.
Warhol brought back the image into painting and aligned the fine arts world firmly with the world of capitalism. He also paved the way for many different types of art, though Marcel Duchamp had done the same thing about 40 years before Warhol came along. Yet after Warhol was through, any type of art was now allowed. Witness the works of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst.
Like his art or hate it, no one can deny the importance of Andy Warhol in the world of the fine arts. "Andy was a genius," one visual artist told me years after his death. She was probably right; Warhol was a genius.
Andy Warhol's rise in the art world coincided with a massive increase in art prices. "Corporate capitalism has begun to adopt abstract art," wrote John Berger in the 1970's.Yet soon corporate capitalism and its CEO's started to adopt and buy all kinds of art.
In the early 1980's, 'Time' magazine art critic Robert Hughes noted with alarm the then-massive prices paid by the super rich for art masterpieces.
A mediocre Picasso painting from the early 1920's sold 60 years later for $3 million American. Yet by 2015 art prices for some works went through the roof. A Picasso painting in 2015 raked in nearly $180 million. An Alberto Giacometti sculpture sold for over $100 million. Now Andy Warhol didn't cause these nearly four fold rise in prices - adjusted for inflation that is.
Part of the reason for this massive rise in prices for art was the rise of financial services and their increasing role in the world economy. "Americans used to make money making things," one financial analyst said. "Now they make money by making money." Trillions of dollars and other currencies slosh around in the world's financial markets every day, and their owners were looking for a place to park their money and make money doing this. So the art world soon became a place for the rich to spend their cash and make money doing this.
Warhol couldn't raise the price of art masterpieces by himself. Still, his lifestyle, his massive buying sprees and his joy in being rich, changed forever the image of visual artists. Warhol's actions supported the new trends in art prices.
It's true that Warhol also made movies, invented so-called movie stars and tried to mimic Hollywood - or make fun of it. Yet with the exception of one or two of his movies and his founding of the rock group, 'The Velvet Underground' Warhol will be remembered for his paintings and silk screened images. "When does this film start?" one viewer asked after watching Warhol's film 'Empire' for about 10 minutes. In this movie Warhol just trained a stationary camera at the top of the Empire State building in New York City. And the film just went on like that for hours on end. It bored many viewers who just walked out of the theatre where the movie was being shown.
Warhol brought back the image into painting and aligned the fine arts world firmly with the world of capitalism. He also paved the way for many different types of art, though Marcel Duchamp had done the same thing about 40 years before Warhol came along. Yet after Warhol was through, any type of art was now allowed. Witness the works of Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst.
Like his art or hate it, no one can deny the importance of Andy Warhol in the world of the fine arts. "Andy was a genius," one visual artist told me years after his death. She was probably right; Warhol was a genius.
Tuesday 21 July 2015
Andy Warhol - Part Three
Andy and His Art - Part Three
Warhol's painting polarized the art world. Some saw his art as trash. "Warhol's work for me," wrote the British art critic Peter Fuller, "is style unredeemed by an iota of expressivity; he is fundamentally inauthentic."
Warhol epitomized, says Fuller, what went wrong in painting, from the 1960's to the 1980's.
Yet Arthur Danto, a philosopher and art critic for 'The Nation' loved Warhol's work. 'Brillo Boxes' which copied the original Brillo Boxes, took art and art history to a new level, Danto claimed. It raised fundamental questions about what art is and what art could be. For Danto, Warhol's work led to what he called, 'The end of art'. And Danto went on to write books or at least one book with that title. Warhol, Danto claimed, played a pivotal role in the changing of art.
For Arthur Danto, after Warhol came along, the world of the fine arts could never be the same.
Now there's no doubt that Andy Warhol `did change the world of the elite fine arts. Warhol was part of the 'Pop Art' movement that brought the image and images back into the art world. In the early 1960's, artists like Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claus Oldenburgh and Patti Oldenburgh, Robert Indiana and above all Warhol, reached out into the world of mass culture for their subjects.
Lichtenstein painted or re-arranged comic strips into big pictures. Others like the Oldenburghs took small foods like hot dogs and blew them up into massive sculptures. These artists and others like them did transform in an imaginative way the images they found in mass culture.
Warhol didn't really do this. He just copied photos, pictures of celebrities and even foods like Campbell soup cans and silk screened them. This was a major shift in emphasis in the world of the fine arts. Before the Pop Artists came along, the reigning painters in the fine arts world were the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning, and Franz Kline. "I am nature," Pollock told the German emigre artist Hans Hoffman. "Your theories don't concern me. Put up or shut up."
Pollock and others, helped by the Central Intelligence Agency turned New York City into the centre of the art world and dethroned Paris from its formerly ruling art perch at the top of the heap. Most of the Abstract Expressionists were big macho men with sizeable egos to match. They railed against mass culture and proclaimed themselves alienated from American society. They supposedly looked into themselves to create their mostly abstract paintings.
Anything that looked like something in the real world, they denounced as 'illustrative'. It was simply inferior art.
Warhol turned the tables on the abstract Expressionists. He painted images from mass culture. He was delicate looking an talked in a fragile sometimes whispering style. He looked fragile and he was. He loved American culture, film stars and American products. "I love Hollywood," Warhol said. "I love plastic." Most counter cultural people in the 1960's loathed plastic, seeing it as a synthetic anti-human substance that was phoney.
Warhol's practice of using other people 's photos sometimes led to trouble. One artist sued him for using her photos of flowers in one of his silk screen series. Yet mostly Warhol got away with using other people's photos. In the end he made a fortune taking photos of wealthy people and then smearing paint on the photos. Rich people paid Warhol top dollars for their portraits by him.
Warhol's painting polarized the art world. Some saw his art as trash. "Warhol's work for me," wrote the British art critic Peter Fuller, "is style unredeemed by an iota of expressivity; he is fundamentally inauthentic."
Warhol epitomized, says Fuller, what went wrong in painting, from the 1960's to the 1980's.
Yet Arthur Danto, a philosopher and art critic for 'The Nation' loved Warhol's work. 'Brillo Boxes' which copied the original Brillo Boxes, took art and art history to a new level, Danto claimed. It raised fundamental questions about what art is and what art could be. For Danto, Warhol's work led to what he called, 'The end of art'. And Danto went on to write books or at least one book with that title. Warhol, Danto claimed, played a pivotal role in the changing of art.
For Arthur Danto, after Warhol came along, the world of the fine arts could never be the same.
Now there's no doubt that Andy Warhol `did change the world of the elite fine arts. Warhol was part of the 'Pop Art' movement that brought the image and images back into the art world. In the early 1960's, artists like Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Claus Oldenburgh and Patti Oldenburgh, Robert Indiana and above all Warhol, reached out into the world of mass culture for their subjects.
Lichtenstein painted or re-arranged comic strips into big pictures. Others like the Oldenburghs took small foods like hot dogs and blew them up into massive sculptures. These artists and others like them did transform in an imaginative way the images they found in mass culture.
Warhol didn't really do this. He just copied photos, pictures of celebrities and even foods like Campbell soup cans and silk screened them. This was a major shift in emphasis in the world of the fine arts. Before the Pop Artists came along, the reigning painters in the fine arts world were the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Wilhelm de Kooning, and Franz Kline. "I am nature," Pollock told the German emigre artist Hans Hoffman. "Your theories don't concern me. Put up or shut up."
Pollock and others, helped by the Central Intelligence Agency turned New York City into the centre of the art world and dethroned Paris from its formerly ruling art perch at the top of the heap. Most of the Abstract Expressionists were big macho men with sizeable egos to match. They railed against mass culture and proclaimed themselves alienated from American society. They supposedly looked into themselves to create their mostly abstract paintings.
Anything that looked like something in the real world, they denounced as 'illustrative'. It was simply inferior art.
Warhol turned the tables on the abstract Expressionists. He painted images from mass culture. He was delicate looking an talked in a fragile sometimes whispering style. He looked fragile and he was. He loved American culture, film stars and American products. "I love Hollywood," Warhol said. "I love plastic." Most counter cultural people in the 1960's loathed plastic, seeing it as a synthetic anti-human substance that was phoney.
Warhol's practice of using other people 's photos sometimes led to trouble. One artist sued him for using her photos of flowers in one of his silk screen series. Yet mostly Warhol got away with using other people's photos. In the end he made a fortune taking photos of wealthy people and then smearing paint on the photos. Rich people paid Warhol top dollars for their portraits by him.
Monday 20 July 2015
Andy Warhol and His Art- Part Two
Andy Warhol - Part Two
In the early 1960's, Andy Warhol became a pop artist. Silkscreened pictures of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell soup cans and imitation Brillo Boxes poured out of Warhol's studio that he called 'The Factory'. Warhol did some of the silk screening but other silk screen portraits and pictures were churned out by his assistants.
Some older artists didn't like Warhol or his his lifestyle that they assumed was gay. "You're too swish," near pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns told Andy when he asked why they stayed away from him. Interestingly enough, both Rauschenberg and Johns were themselves gay and had been lovers. Yet Warhol kept on producing art and growing his fortune.
He produced and directed movies, most of which bored audiences. He founded a rock group called 'The Velvet Underground' and began to hang out with the rich and the famous which he was now too. At an art get together in the mid-1960's in Philadelphia Warhol showed up with one of his superstars, namely Edie Sedgewick. The crowd was so great that it nearly crushed Warhol and Sedgewick. In 'The Factory' speed freaks, substance abusers and the truly insane swirled around him.
One of these disturbed groupies was Valerie Solanas, head of SCUM, or the Society for Cutting Up Men. On June 3,1968 she pumped a number of bullets into Warhol and nearly killed him. Mario Amaya, an art critic was slightly wounded by Solanas but he recovered quite easily.
Warhol wasn't so lucky. He survived but barely. At one point in hospital Warhol was pronounced to be dead. and he was never the same man afterwards. "It's the way things happen in life that's unreal," Warhol said about his near death.
After this terrible trauma, Warhol became far more reclusive. He moved to a new office that was well guarded. He started a magazine about celebrities called 'Interview'. He published books like 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back'. He said things that were always quotable.
"Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," he once said. And when asked about the Vietnam War that was raging in the 1960's, he once replied, "It's happening."
Then in the 1980's he befriended younger artists like Jean Michel Basquiat who later died of a drug overdose. He started partying again. His inventive days were over but sometimes his art surprised people. He did a series on Chairman Mao which were basically huge photos of China's ruler that Warhol touched up with smears of paint. And in this vein he made lots of money photographing the rich and the famous then touching up the photos with paint.
Warhol loved to eat chocolates. This may have inflamed his gall bladder. He went into a hospital in February 1987 for a routine gall bladder operation. Yet he died in the hospital at the age of 58. Warhol's death staggered the art world. In death as in life Andy Warhol was always news.
Obituaries focused on Warhol's personality, and his pictures or silk screens of soup cans movie stars and celebrities. Others mentioned his disaster series or pictures of car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. A few mentioned his religious pictures that were often copies of 'The Last Supper' Clearly Warhol was an outstanding artist.
In the early 1960's, Andy Warhol became a pop artist. Silkscreened pictures of Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Campbell soup cans and imitation Brillo Boxes poured out of Warhol's studio that he called 'The Factory'. Warhol did some of the silk screening but other silk screen portraits and pictures were churned out by his assistants.
Some older artists didn't like Warhol or his his lifestyle that they assumed was gay. "You're too swish," near pop artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns told Andy when he asked why they stayed away from him. Interestingly enough, both Rauschenberg and Johns were themselves gay and had been lovers. Yet Warhol kept on producing art and growing his fortune.
He produced and directed movies, most of which bored audiences. He founded a rock group called 'The Velvet Underground' and began to hang out with the rich and the famous which he was now too. At an art get together in the mid-1960's in Philadelphia Warhol showed up with one of his superstars, namely Edie Sedgewick. The crowd was so great that it nearly crushed Warhol and Sedgewick. In 'The Factory' speed freaks, substance abusers and the truly insane swirled around him.
One of these disturbed groupies was Valerie Solanas, head of SCUM, or the Society for Cutting Up Men. On June 3,1968 she pumped a number of bullets into Warhol and nearly killed him. Mario Amaya, an art critic was slightly wounded by Solanas but he recovered quite easily.
Warhol wasn't so lucky. He survived but barely. At one point in hospital Warhol was pronounced to be dead. and he was never the same man afterwards. "It's the way things happen in life that's unreal," Warhol said about his near death.
After this terrible trauma, Warhol became far more reclusive. He moved to a new office that was well guarded. He started a magazine about celebrities called 'Interview'. He published books like 'The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back'. He said things that were always quotable.
"Everybody will be famous for fifteen minutes," he once said. And when asked about the Vietnam War that was raging in the 1960's, he once replied, "It's happening."
Then in the 1980's he befriended younger artists like Jean Michel Basquiat who later died of a drug overdose. He started partying again. His inventive days were over but sometimes his art surprised people. He did a series on Chairman Mao which were basically huge photos of China's ruler that Warhol touched up with smears of paint. And in this vein he made lots of money photographing the rich and the famous then touching up the photos with paint.
Warhol loved to eat chocolates. This may have inflamed his gall bladder. He went into a hospital in February 1987 for a routine gall bladder operation. Yet he died in the hospital at the age of 58. Warhol's death staggered the art world. In death as in life Andy Warhol was always news.
Obituaries focused on Warhol's personality, and his pictures or silk screens of soup cans movie stars and celebrities. Others mentioned his disaster series or pictures of car crashes, race riots and electric chairs. A few mentioned his religious pictures that were often copies of 'The Last Supper' Clearly Warhol was an outstanding artist.
Thursday 16 July 2015
Andy Warhol in Three or Four Blogs.
Andy Warhol in Three or Four Blogs - Part One
His friends called him 'Andy' even when he'd become a millionaire and a world-famous artist. Andrej Warhola as he was first known, was an artistic genius. He changed the conversation completely in the fine arts world. Yet was this good or bad? Here people disagree and I can't decide myself.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Warhol's parents were poor immigrants from the northern part of what was then Czechoslavakia. "They were Ruthenians," someone told me. "And in the world of Eastern Europe at that time, that put them right at the bottom of the social scale."
Yet with the optimism and ambition that so many immigrants have shown after coming to the U.S. of A. or Canada, the Warholas struggled and reached upward in the rough tough industrial city of Pittsburgh.
Their son Andrej had his problems. As a child, he was often ill. He had Sydenham's
Chorea and spent a lot of time in bed. He lost most of his hair and pockmarks scarred his face. Warhol's mother Julia protected the frail son of hers from the world and his bullying brothers. His coal mining father realized that Andrej was a gifted artist and saved money to send his son to high school and then to art college.
Warhol went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, funded in part by the multimillionaire Carnegie families. He graduated in 1949 and then headed off to New York City. Warhol landed in this city, the economic and cultural capital of the U.S.A. and at that time the world, with about $200 in his pocket. This would be about $2,000 in to-day's currency.
In the next ten years he became one of the most highly paid commercial artist in the world, earning sometimes over $125,000 a year. His main ticket to riches was creating ads of women's shoes done in a blotted ink line style. His mother moved to New York City and backstopped her son's efforts. By now he'd changed his name to Andy Warhol.
Then in the late 1950's Warhol went to Europe and visited its art museums. "There he saw the works of the great artist and saw what real fame was," one of his friends said in effect. Warhol returned to New York City, determined to become famous in the fine art world.
Warhol had already had exhibitions in small art galleries. He drew fey or cute pictures of animals and human beings. Now in the 1960's Warhol saw that what became known as 'Pop Art' was the new style. Here, young artist drew images from the world of mass culture and turned them into paintings. Warhol followed this trend and soon became on of the art world's shining stars.
His friends called him 'Andy' even when he'd become a millionaire and a world-famous artist. Andrej Warhola as he was first known, was an artistic genius. He changed the conversation completely in the fine arts world. Yet was this good or bad? Here people disagree and I can't decide myself.
Born in Pittsburgh in 1928, Warhol's parents were poor immigrants from the northern part of what was then Czechoslavakia. "They were Ruthenians," someone told me. "And in the world of Eastern Europe at that time, that put them right at the bottom of the social scale."
Yet with the optimism and ambition that so many immigrants have shown after coming to the U.S. of A. or Canada, the Warholas struggled and reached upward in the rough tough industrial city of Pittsburgh.
Their son Andrej had his problems. As a child, he was often ill. He had Sydenham's
Chorea and spent a lot of time in bed. He lost most of his hair and pockmarks scarred his face. Warhol's mother Julia protected the frail son of hers from the world and his bullying brothers. His coal mining father realized that Andrej was a gifted artist and saved money to send his son to high school and then to art college.
Warhol went to the Carnegie Institute of Technology, funded in part by the multimillionaire Carnegie families. He graduated in 1949 and then headed off to New York City. Warhol landed in this city, the economic and cultural capital of the U.S.A. and at that time the world, with about $200 in his pocket. This would be about $2,000 in to-day's currency.
In the next ten years he became one of the most highly paid commercial artist in the world, earning sometimes over $125,000 a year. His main ticket to riches was creating ads of women's shoes done in a blotted ink line style. His mother moved to New York City and backstopped her son's efforts. By now he'd changed his name to Andy Warhol.
Then in the late 1950's Warhol went to Europe and visited its art museums. "There he saw the works of the great artist and saw what real fame was," one of his friends said in effect. Warhol returned to New York City, determined to become famous in the fine art world.
Warhol had already had exhibitions in small art galleries. He drew fey or cute pictures of animals and human beings. Now in the 1960's Warhol saw that what became known as 'Pop Art' was the new style. Here, young artist drew images from the world of mass culture and turned them into paintings. Warhol followed this trend and soon became on of the art world's shining stars.
Wednesday 8 July 2015
Postscript: The Big Man and The Little Woman
Postscript: The Big Man and The Little Woman
To-day in the world of the fine arts, Frida Kahlo is seen by many women as a secular saint. A woman who grew up in a sexist country, endured disability, pain, abuse from her husband and his faithfulness, as well as obscurity - what woman cannot admire Frida Kahlo? Yet was she a great artist?
First off, Diego rivera was a better artist, technically speaking than his wife. "Men have more opportunities than women," a feminist writer told me years ago. This was true for Rivera.
He won art scholarships, spent years in Europe, studying there and so learned artistic skills that Frida never could. Anyone who's seen just reproductions of Rivera's famous mural, 'Detroit Industry' in the Detroit Institute of Arts, can see its a great work of art. Rivera's communist politics are now history. Yet mush of his art work will last.
"They endured,"novelist William Faulkner said about his famous creation, the Snopes family. And the same is true of many of Rivera's works. They exude power. They will endure.
Then look at a reproduction of Kahlo's 'Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States'. Kahlo did this in the United States about the same time as Rivera was working on 'Detroit Industry'.
Kahlo's work is very good, but her overall art doesn't match Rivera's. Sometimes her paintings descend into pure schmaltz and self-pity. "I am the subject I know best," Kahlo once said. This is true and it's good that she immortalized her sufferings in oils on canvass.Yet sometimes her pain overwhelms her art.
Kahlo has been rediscovered and that's fine. Yet Rivera's art still moves me more than hers does. He was simply a more accomplished artist.
To-day in the world of the fine arts, Frida Kahlo is seen by many women as a secular saint. A woman who grew up in a sexist country, endured disability, pain, abuse from her husband and his faithfulness, as well as obscurity - what woman cannot admire Frida Kahlo? Yet was she a great artist?
First off, Diego rivera was a better artist, technically speaking than his wife. "Men have more opportunities than women," a feminist writer told me years ago. This was true for Rivera.
He won art scholarships, spent years in Europe, studying there and so learned artistic skills that Frida never could. Anyone who's seen just reproductions of Rivera's famous mural, 'Detroit Industry' in the Detroit Institute of Arts, can see its a great work of art. Rivera's communist politics are now history. Yet mush of his art work will last.
"They endured,"novelist William Faulkner said about his famous creation, the Snopes family. And the same is true of many of Rivera's works. They exude power. They will endure.
Then look at a reproduction of Kahlo's 'Self-Portrait on the Borderline Between Mexico and the United States'. Kahlo did this in the United States about the same time as Rivera was working on 'Detroit Industry'.
Kahlo's work is very good, but her overall art doesn't match Rivera's. Sometimes her paintings descend into pure schmaltz and self-pity. "I am the subject I know best," Kahlo once said. This is true and it's good that she immortalized her sufferings in oils on canvass.Yet sometimes her pain overwhelms her art.
Kahlo has been rediscovered and that's fine. Yet Rivera's art still moves me more than hers does. He was simply a more accomplished artist.
Saturday 27 June 2015
The Big Man and the Little Woman - Part Four
The Big man and the Little Woman - Part Four , Conclusion
In the 1980's communism started to come apart. In China communist rulers turned away from communism. Then in that same decade, Mikhail Gorbachev became head of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev called for what he called 'perestroika' and 'glasnost' or restructuring and opening up the economy. He allowed citizens of the Soviet Union to speak out about the problems they faced.
Yet as Gorbachev opened up the Soviet Union to the winds of change, it started to collapse. In 1991, on the heels of a failed coup by hardline communists, the Soviet Union just fell apart and splintered into many separate republics. Its former eastern European satellites went their own way too.
Communism by 1992 was nearly extinct and the prophesies of communists and marxists were now nearly as dead as the dodo. In light of this massive upheaval, much of Rivera's work seemed dated and completely off base. Though some of his works still retained their power.
Yet as the 1990's progressed, Kahlo's work took centre stage. "I can't think of any other woman artist," a woman historian I knew said, "who is as famous as Frida Kahlo is right now." She said this over twenty years ago but it's still true to-day in 2015.
Rivera's fame did not shrivel away. Yet by now Kahlo's light nearly outshone her onetime more famous husband. "It seems likely that Kahlo would have found this astonishing," said poet and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith. Yet it happened.
The 20th century has witnessed many famous art couples. There was Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner,, Steiglitz and Georgia O'Keefe, Wilhelm de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, and Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland. Yet in all these cases, in life and in death, the male's fame outranked the female's. But in the case of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, this was no longer true. Now Frida Kahlo's reputation outranked that of her former husband's.
It was a massive change. The little woman finally caught up with the big male artist and may have surpassed him in the public's mind. No one could have predicted this would happen.
In the 1980's communism started to come apart. In China communist rulers turned away from communism. Then in that same decade, Mikhail Gorbachev became head of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev called for what he called 'perestroika' and 'glasnost' or restructuring and opening up the economy. He allowed citizens of the Soviet Union to speak out about the problems they faced.
Yet as Gorbachev opened up the Soviet Union to the winds of change, it started to collapse. In 1991, on the heels of a failed coup by hardline communists, the Soviet Union just fell apart and splintered into many separate republics. Its former eastern European satellites went their own way too.
Communism by 1992 was nearly extinct and the prophesies of communists and marxists were now nearly as dead as the dodo. In light of this massive upheaval, much of Rivera's work seemed dated and completely off base. Though some of his works still retained their power.
Yet as the 1990's progressed, Kahlo's work took centre stage. "I can't think of any other woman artist," a woman historian I knew said, "who is as famous as Frida Kahlo is right now." She said this over twenty years ago but it's still true to-day in 2015.
Rivera's fame did not shrivel away. Yet by now Kahlo's light nearly outshone her onetime more famous husband. "It seems likely that Kahlo would have found this astonishing," said poet and art critic Edward Lucie-Smith. Yet it happened.
The 20th century has witnessed many famous art couples. There was Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner,, Steiglitz and Georgia O'Keefe, Wilhelm de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, and Michael Snow and Joyce Wieland. Yet in all these cases, in life and in death, the male's fame outranked the female's. But in the case of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, this was no longer true. Now Frida Kahlo's reputation outranked that of her former husband's.
It was a massive change. The little woman finally caught up with the big male artist and may have surpassed him in the public's mind. No one could have predicted this would happen.
Friday 26 June 2015
The Big Man and the Little Woman - Part Three
Part Three of the entry 'The Big Man and the Little Woman'
In the mid to late 1960's in the United States, small groups of women met, talked and planned. These women gave birth to the second wave of feminism. Some of them had taken part in the civil rights movement in the U.S. Here men assumed the power and told women to stay in the kitchen, cook and serve meals, answer phones and do the clerical work.
"The only position for women in our movement is prone," in effect said Stokely Carmichael, one of the leading civil rights activists of the 1960's.
Educated women reacted against this belief in male superiority. They called it 'sexism'. Already Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique' had been published in 1963. It was a very moderate book that called for some equality between men and women.
Yet these younger women meeting in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and other places, went far further. They called ther present set-up 'patriarchy' or the rule of women by men. They vowed to overthrow patriarchy and put it in its place complete equality between men and women.
They marched into the streets, demonstrated, recruited more women to their cause, grew in numbers and their cause called 'feminism' spread around the world.
In the art world men nearly always devalued women's work. "Women cannot paint," said the modern painter Hans Hoffman. "Only men," he said in effect, "can spread their wings."
Soon feminists scholars challenged this attitude. 'Why Are There No Great Women Artists' was written by art scholar Linda Nochlin. Nochlin pointed out in this article the tremendous obstacles women artists faced.
Other feminists like the writer and author Germaine Greer, and artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro scoured the history of art and found many great women artists.
Soon the feminists discovered Frida Kahlo for in the early 1980's, Hayden Herrera's massive biography of Kahlo was published. Here was a woman who painted her pains, her worries and her disabilities. Also she married a man who abused her, cheated on her and had a massive ego.
"The personal is the political," feminists started to say. In other words the everyday problems women faced were caused by patriarchy and male sexism. Kahlo's work revealed a lot of this. She was a victim of male oppression with a capital V.
As women started to discover the work of Kahlo, a momentous thing happened. Communism started to unravel, first in China and then in the Soviet Union.. "It does not matter whether the cat is black or white," said china's new ruler Deng Xiao Ping, "as long as it catches the mouse." 'Little Deng' as he was called launched China on a capitalist course and scrapped nearly all the socialist rules and regulations in China.
Then came a massive change in the Soviet Union. This too affected the way art historians looked at Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
(End of Part Three. )
In the mid to late 1960's in the United States, small groups of women met, talked and planned. These women gave birth to the second wave of feminism. Some of them had taken part in the civil rights movement in the U.S. Here men assumed the power and told women to stay in the kitchen, cook and serve meals, answer phones and do the clerical work.
"The only position for women in our movement is prone," in effect said Stokely Carmichael, one of the leading civil rights activists of the 1960's.
Educated women reacted against this belief in male superiority. They called it 'sexism'. Already Betty Friedan's 'The Feminine Mystique' had been published in 1963. It was a very moderate book that called for some equality between men and women.
Yet these younger women meeting in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and other places, went far further. They called ther present set-up 'patriarchy' or the rule of women by men. They vowed to overthrow patriarchy and put it in its place complete equality between men and women.
They marched into the streets, demonstrated, recruited more women to their cause, grew in numbers and their cause called 'feminism' spread around the world.
In the art world men nearly always devalued women's work. "Women cannot paint," said the modern painter Hans Hoffman. "Only men," he said in effect, "can spread their wings."
Soon feminists scholars challenged this attitude. 'Why Are There No Great Women Artists' was written by art scholar Linda Nochlin. Nochlin pointed out in this article the tremendous obstacles women artists faced.
Other feminists like the writer and author Germaine Greer, and artists like Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro scoured the history of art and found many great women artists.
Soon the feminists discovered Frida Kahlo for in the early 1980's, Hayden Herrera's massive biography of Kahlo was published. Here was a woman who painted her pains, her worries and her disabilities. Also she married a man who abused her, cheated on her and had a massive ego.
"The personal is the political," feminists started to say. In other words the everyday problems women faced were caused by patriarchy and male sexism. Kahlo's work revealed a lot of this. She was a victim of male oppression with a capital V.
As women started to discover the work of Kahlo, a momentous thing happened. Communism started to unravel, first in China and then in the Soviet Union.. "It does not matter whether the cat is black or white," said china's new ruler Deng Xiao Ping, "as long as it catches the mouse." 'Little Deng' as he was called launched China on a capitalist course and scrapped nearly all the socialist rules and regulations in China.
Then came a massive change in the Soviet Union. This too affected the way art historians looked at Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.
(End of Part Three. )
Monday 22 June 2015
The Big Man and the Littel Woman - Part Two
The Big Man and the Little Woman - Part Two
When Diego Rivera came back to Mexico in 1920, the ferocious revolution that had ripped huge swathes of destruction through the country was over. Power was now wielded by brown-skinned Mexicans and no longer by white ones. The revolution had seen to that.
Rivera was hired by the new Mexican Minister of Education Jose Vascencelos to use his art to educate Mexicans about their past. Rivera went to work.
He painted huge murals whose elements Edward Lucie Smith points out, "were taken from the Cubists, from Gauguin, Le Douanier Rousseau and perhaps most of all from 15th century Italian fresco paintings."
By his work and his energy Rivera became Mexico's most well-known painters. He, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Siqueros became Mexico's three greatest muralists. Yet Rivera was also a communist who strangely enough did work for Americans in the U.S. itself. In doing this he made the art fof the mural well known outside Mexico.
He did a mural in Rockefeller Centre in New York City. Yet here the energetic Nelson Rockefeller, later governor of New York State, ordered the mural destroyed after Rivera refused to take out a figure that looked like V.I. Lenin, the father of the Russian Revolution.
Though a communist, Rivera clashed with the Mexican Communist party and the communist rulers of the Soviet Union, who demanded total obedience to the communist party line.
In the 1930's, Rivera urged the progressive president of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, to allow the exiled Leon Trotsky to come to Mexico. After this happened, communists were outraged. "My parents hated Trotskyites," a former communist told months ago. Trotsky had helped create the Russian Revolution but later clashed with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Stalin kicked Trotsky out of the Soviet Union.
Rivera was thrown out of the Communist Party and was only allowed to rejoin the party after many years and making many apologies. Maeanwhile Frida Kahlo was seen mainly as Rivera's consort who tagged along with Rivera as they travelled around the world. He and sometimes she had love affairs outside their marriage.
Detroit to-day is a bankrupt city, a dour symbol of the U.S.'s Rust Belt. "40 per cent of its street lights were blown out," a former resident of Detroit told me. "I saw this in a magazine ad." Yet in the 1930's the city was a booming centre of the auto industry. Here, Rivera painted a famous mural for the Detroit Institute of Art. It still exists to-day.
Meanwhile Frida struggled. When she was in her teens, she was travelling on a bus that was crushed by a train. A pipe rammed through her body. She survived but she never recovered from this terrible injury. She underwent many operations. Out of this suffering, she created art.
Kahlo turned to the Mexican 'retablos' as her models. These pictures gave thanks to God or holy figures for saving the person who had been in danger.
"Both Frida's paintings and the retablos," writes Hayden Herrera, "record the facts of physical distress in detail without squeamishness." The narrative of the retablos, Herrera says must be accurate, legible and dramatic. "The retablo is both a visual receipt, a thank you note and a hedge against furture dangers."
As Edward Lucie Smith points out, Kahlo was influenced also by the paintings and portraits of Hermenegildo Bustos, a 19th century Mexican artist.
At the time, Kahlo was seen as a minor artist who painted pictures about her disabilities, health problems and suffering. Rivera on the other hand, was classified as a great painter who dealt with big male themes, like politics, class struggle and Mexican history.
Kahlo died in 1954, Rivera in 1957. He was seen quite rightly as one of Mexico's greatest artists. Kahlo was forgotten and was banished from art history by most art chroniclers.
Yet then came two great changes.
( To be continued ).
When Diego Rivera came back to Mexico in 1920, the ferocious revolution that had ripped huge swathes of destruction through the country was over. Power was now wielded by brown-skinned Mexicans and no longer by white ones. The revolution had seen to that.
Rivera was hired by the new Mexican Minister of Education Jose Vascencelos to use his art to educate Mexicans about their past. Rivera went to work.
He painted huge murals whose elements Edward Lucie Smith points out, "were taken from the Cubists, from Gauguin, Le Douanier Rousseau and perhaps most of all from 15th century Italian fresco paintings."
By his work and his energy Rivera became Mexico's most well-known painters. He, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Siqueros became Mexico's three greatest muralists. Yet Rivera was also a communist who strangely enough did work for Americans in the U.S. itself. In doing this he made the art fof the mural well known outside Mexico.
He did a mural in Rockefeller Centre in New York City. Yet here the energetic Nelson Rockefeller, later governor of New York State, ordered the mural destroyed after Rivera refused to take out a figure that looked like V.I. Lenin, the father of the Russian Revolution.
Though a communist, Rivera clashed with the Mexican Communist party and the communist rulers of the Soviet Union, who demanded total obedience to the communist party line.
In the 1930's, Rivera urged the progressive president of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, to allow the exiled Leon Trotsky to come to Mexico. After this happened, communists were outraged. "My parents hated Trotskyites," a former communist told months ago. Trotsky had helped create the Russian Revolution but later clashed with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Stalin kicked Trotsky out of the Soviet Union.
Rivera was thrown out of the Communist Party and was only allowed to rejoin the party after many years and making many apologies. Maeanwhile Frida Kahlo was seen mainly as Rivera's consort who tagged along with Rivera as they travelled around the world. He and sometimes she had love affairs outside their marriage.
Detroit to-day is a bankrupt city, a dour symbol of the U.S.'s Rust Belt. "40 per cent of its street lights were blown out," a former resident of Detroit told me. "I saw this in a magazine ad." Yet in the 1930's the city was a booming centre of the auto industry. Here, Rivera painted a famous mural for the Detroit Institute of Art. It still exists to-day.
Meanwhile Frida struggled. When she was in her teens, she was travelling on a bus that was crushed by a train. A pipe rammed through her body. She survived but she never recovered from this terrible injury. She underwent many operations. Out of this suffering, she created art.
Kahlo turned to the Mexican 'retablos' as her models. These pictures gave thanks to God or holy figures for saving the person who had been in danger.
"Both Frida's paintings and the retablos," writes Hayden Herrera, "record the facts of physical distress in detail without squeamishness." The narrative of the retablos, Herrera says must be accurate, legible and dramatic. "The retablo is both a visual receipt, a thank you note and a hedge against furture dangers."
As Edward Lucie Smith points out, Kahlo was influenced also by the paintings and portraits of Hermenegildo Bustos, a 19th century Mexican artist.
At the time, Kahlo was seen as a minor artist who painted pictures about her disabilities, health problems and suffering. Rivera on the other hand, was classified as a great painter who dealt with big male themes, like politics, class struggle and Mexican history.
Kahlo died in 1954, Rivera in 1957. He was seen quite rightly as one of Mexico's greatest artists. Kahlo was forgotten and was banished from art history by most art chroniclers.
Yet then came two great changes.
( To be continued ).
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